Inclusivity
Overview
During our project, we carefully consider how to promote inclusive presentation of team projects. So, we try to reach out to different groups and educate them about the biology and the seriousness of plastic pollution in the world today. By doing it all,we hope to draw people’s attention to plastic pollution and educate them to actively take some actions in their lives to contribute to reducing plastic pollution. However, today, there are still many groups that lack relevant knowledge because they cannot use the Internet or have no access to the Internet at all, and some groups have fewer access to relevant information because of some physical obstacles. These are vulnerable groups in the society, and we want to pay more attention to the needs of these vulnerable groups. So, we set our target audience as the disabled, poor children and the elderly .
Part 1 The Disabled
Caring for people with disabilities
According to statistics, there are 650 million people with disabilities in the world. Among all human groups, persons with disabilities are marginalized and unappreciated, and they are hindered by physical, legal and social obstacles to the realization of their potential. In some developing countries, for example, up to 90 Percent of children with disabilities do not have the opportunity to attend school 1.
On 13 December 2006, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly. The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is the first comprehensive human rights convention adopted by the international community in the twenty-first century and the first human rights convention open for signature by a regional integration organization. It marks an “exemplary shift” in attitudes and approaches to people with disabilities. The purpose of the Convention is to promote, protect and ensure the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by all persons with disabilities and to promote respect for the inherent dignity of persons with disabilities. Article 24 of the Convention provides that “States Parties recognize the right of persons with disabilities to education. In order to realize this right without discrimination and on equal footing, States parties should ensure inclusive education systems and lifelong learning at all levels of education” 1.
To fulfill the purpose of the convention, we came to the Boyue Hearing and Speech Rehabilitation Center in Hongshan District to conduct a popular science class on plastics and synthetic biology for the hearing-impaired children here. During the activity, the children were very serious and actively answered questions. They took the initiative to show us the plastic around us, and they said loudly that we should not litter plastic waste everywhere and that we should take care of the environment. In order to let the children understand the idea of “turning waste into treasure”, we led the children to carry out a fun handicraft activity - plastic bag painting, using plastic bags and paints to draw flowers.
The world of hearing-impaired children may be mostly quiet, but they are really lovely.They love life and they want to be happy. We think that painting was a good way to reflect their inner workings, and it have turned out to be. During the whole painting process, they took the initiative to ask us for help, and they had their own unique understanding of the choice and matching of colors, and each child drew their own flowers. We saw that they always had a smile on their face. We always can feel that they have a heartfelt desire for knowledge, love and companionship. After the event, their teachers also told us that the children especially liked our science classes and activities and would also use plastic gloves to do some small crafts.
In addition, in this warm little home, we noticed that there were many pennants hanging on the wall, which were given by the children’s families to the Hearing and Language Rehabilitation Center to express their gratitude to the teachers.
We advocate that all sectors of society should work together to provide more educational resources and support for people with disabilities, whether they are hearing impairment, visual impairment or other physical disabilities, and should not become an obstacle to their pursuit of knowledge and growth.
Part 2 The Poor
In order to broaden our audience, we have set our sights on children in poor areas. In September, the HBUT-China team purchased books on the public welfare website and contacted the head of the Wuhan Municipal Youth League Committee to donate books to Xingfu Primary School in Dongxihu District, Wuhan. Xingfu Primary School is a hope elementary school. Most of the school’s students are left-behind children, and the school lacks educational resources, so we chose to buy children’s popular science books and make picture books about plastic recycling and donate them. In fact, schools are the main way for people to acquire knowledge, and Hope Primary School was established to allow more children who are unable to go to school due to family reasons, so we can effectively broaden our audience by focusing on Hope Primary School. Through our activities, more children from poor areas can be included, and through this we want to show that socio-economic status should not hinder the individual’s right to education.
Part 3 The Elderly
At present, China has entered a medium aging society, but because of the rapid development of information technology, many old people cannot keep up with the pace of The Times and cannot understand some of the current environmental status. Therefore, we take the elderly as the object to carry out a simple plastic knowledge popularization, mainly to introduce the harm of common plastic products in daily life, as well as the pollution problems brought by plastic. At the same time, we also carried out some small games and crafts to create a relaxed and cheerful atmosphere for our activities. After the whole event, the old people all said that the presentation made them understand a lot of knowledge about plastics in life, and they also praised our manual interaction session was very interesting and looked forward to our coming again in the future. As can be seen through the campaign, we strive to ensure that the audience of the ideas we want to convey is not limited to people who are connected to the Internet, because there are still many people in society who lack the opportunity to use high technology or the Internet. Therefore, through our activities, the elderly can also be included, gaining equal access to relevant knowledge and the current situation of the social environment.
