Nowon-gu 'Visiting Disability Awareness Improvement Education'

Education for 1,300 preschool and lower-grade elementary children from 26 institutions until November

Vivid education with direct participation of people with disabilities helps form unbiased perceptions from early childhood

Promotion of the Sinaburo+ Project, producing diverse content such as dramas, interviews, and vlogs featuring people with disabilities

Nowon-gu (Mayor Oh Seung-rok) announced that it will officially launch the “Visiting Disability Awareness Improvement Education” program targeting children in the district.

The district declared a comprehensive plan to enhance convenience for people with disabilities last April and has been promoting related projects to create a disability-friendly city where both people with disabilities and their cohabiting families can be happy.

Among these, “Disability Awareness Improvement and Disability Sensitivity Education” is one of the three core areas. To provide more effective educational content, it was planned as a visiting disability awareness improvement education program directly conducted by people with disabilities.

The target audience is preschool children and lower-grade elementary students in the district. The goal is to provide natural contact experiences with people with disabilities so that children can develop unbiased perceptions about disabilities from an early age.

Since April, the district has established an education plan and recruited participating institutions such as daycare centers, kindergartens, and elementary schools in the area. A total of 26 institutions with about 1,300 children were selected as priority education targets, including schools operating integrated classes for students with and without disabilities.

The education is conducted in the form of a puppet show tailored to the children’s level. Five actors with developmental disabilities from the theater troupe “Meotjin Chingudeul” affiliated with the Korea Developmental Disability Family Research Institute perform in the puppet show. Two of the actors reside in Nowon-gu and also participate in local disability events.

The play is based on discriminatory experiences the actors have faced, with the actors directly manipulating puppets while performing. After the performance, a professional instructor provides explanations to help children understand, and the children have the opportunity to touch the puppets and interact with the actors with disabilities.

The district expects that this vivid storytelling by people with disabilities will not only enhance children’s disability sensitivity but also create job opportunities for young people with disabilities.

In addition, the district is striving to establish a foundation for empathy toward disabilities and disability awareness improvement from a long-term perspective, beyond the mandatory annual disability awareness education.

Plans include producing various content directly involving people with disabilities, such as vlogs depicting the daily lives of people with developmental disabilities, interviews with disabled public officials and sign language interpreters, social experiment cameras, and disability awareness improvement dramas, under the “Sinaburo+ (Plus) Project” to raise residents’ sensitivity toward disabilities.

Oh Seung-rok, Mayor of Nowon-gu, said, “We have launched visiting education to eliminate prejudice against disabilities through education tailored to children’s perspectives. We will continue to promote various projects to complete a disability-friendly city and foster a local culture that respects diversity.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.