SINGAPORE – In a bid to get more persons with disabilities (PWDs) to participate in sports, national agency Sport Singapore (SportSG) will be launching the Social Service Corporate Membership scheme in June.
The initiative was announced by President Halimah Yacob, on Tuesday (March 16) at the inaugural Inclusive Sport Conference 2021.
With this scheme, SportSG hopes to reach over 13,000 new members from special education schools and social service agencies serving PWDs by making ActiveSG facilities more accessible to such organisations.
The member organisations will enjoy advanced booking for all ActiveSG facilities as part of the scheme and they will be given $1,000 worth of ActiveSG credits that can be used to book its facilities and programmes.
Beneficiaries of these organisations will also have free entry to all ActiveSG pools and gyms.
SportSG will also work with partner organisations to come up with regular programmes that are tailor-made based on the beneficiaries’ needs or disabilities.
The national agency hopes the scheme will encourage PWDs to participate in sports more than once a week. According to the 2019 National Sports Participation Survey, one in two PWDs took part in at least one sport activity a week, an increase from 2016 when only one in three participated in sports.
Madam Halimah, who was the event’s guest-of-honour, said: “Sport has long been recognised as a good way to bring people together, regardless of who we are and where we come from.
“It is thus an excellent driving force to empower persons with disabilities to improve their quality of life, build independence and stay healthy physically and mentally.
Through this scheme, SportSG will work with partner organisations “to encourage persons with disabilities to kickstart an active lifestyle through regular sport and exercise activities at our ActiveSG Centres”, added Madam Halimah.
Minister for Culture, Community and Youth Edwin Tong lauded the new scheme, saying it will “create opportunities for the community to enjoy sport together at our ActiveSG centres, building better understanding and fostering meaningful friendships across people of all abilities”.
“It is through progressive steps like this that we can build toward making Singapore a more inclusive sporting nation,” he added.
Speaking at the closing joint panel discussion on Tuesday, Singapore Disability Sports Council (SDSC) president Teo-Koh Sock Miang welcomed the scheme, saying that it was “fantastic news”.
She added that there is potential to create more sporting opportunities for all, saying: “Our community centres are in the neighbourhood where a lot of people with special needs would be able to walk to and participate in an activity.
“Our next challenge is to work with our community centre owners as well as the volunteers there to look at how we can educate them and offer sports to the residents, whether it’s senior citizens or a person with disability, in the neighbourhood.
“If we look across our ecosystem, I would say that there are tremendous opportunities to create partnerships and to develop sporting programmes within those neighbourhood spaces.”
The virtual sport conference, which is co-hosted by the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth, SportSG, SDSC and Special Olympics Singapore, runs from Tuesday to Thursday.
Over the three days, the conference will address various aspects of how to strengthen Singapore’s ecosystem for inclusive sport.
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