Let us help her, because sensory therapy is a chance to improve the quality of life for many children with developmental difficulties. To benefit from it, they need our votes.
Mrs Magda, the mother of a girl receiving sensory therapy at the Special Educational Centre in Zgorzelec, entered Zgorzelec in a programme run by the Aviva Foundation, which launched the recurring “This Matters to Me” grant competition last year. Our institution employs a Sensory Integration therapist, but does not have a properly equipped therapy room, while the Aviva Foundation competition awards grants for ideas serving important social purposes. If we managed to obtain the grant, such a room could be arranged and equipped at the Zgorzelec centre. Grants in this competition are awarded for implementing ideas that gain the greatest support among local and/or virtual communities. That is why the help of our entire community is needed.
Does the Zgorzelec application have a chance?
Thanks to Mrs Magda’s persistence, resourcefulness and determination, the therapy room project for the Special Educational Centre is already quite high in the rankings, but it has been losing its good position for almost two days. It depends only on us, the residents, whether it stays there and competes for the funds that will enable Mrs Dorota, the SI therapist at the Zgorzelec centre, to help children from our county even more effectively. If enough of us vote for the therapy room and perhaps persuade our family, friends and acquaintances to support our project, we will surely succeed. Helping will cost us only a moment of our time. You can vote once, and only one vote may be cast from a single email address, so it would be good to encourage as many people as possible to vote.
Children’s Day is approaching—let us make a joint gift to those who particularly need our help!
How to vote?
On the page https://todlamniewazne.pl/inicjatywa,212,sala-do-terapii-integracji-sensorycznej-zgorzelec.html or https://todlamniewazne.pl/, enter “Zgorzelec” in the find an initiative field
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About the “This Matters to Me” competition
Any adult may submit their idea, in the form of an investment or social programme, to the competition. The Foundation counts on people’s creativity and social engagement; however, it is important that the submitted proposal serve the common good, meaning that the benefits of its implementation should be felt by a broad community. Voting for the most interesting initiative takes place online, and social media are most often used to promote the project.
A jury consisting of respected individuals associated with the Aviva Foundation distributes the pool of money allocated for grants. Funds are awarded to initiatives that receive the greatest support in the online vote.
Sensory integration therapy
Sensory processing (sensory integration) is a complicated process in which the nervous system receives information from all the senses (touch; the vestibular system, which receives movement information; body awareness, smell, taste, sight and hearing), then organises and interprets it so that it can be used as purposefully and effectively as possible in action. For most of us, this process takes place automatically. When we hear a conversation or a bird singing, our brain interprets these sounds as speech or animal noises, and as a result we respond to them appropriately. It is different for people with sensory processing disorders, for whom both the process of interpreting the information received and, consequently, the reaction to the stimuli provided are abnormal. Many people affected by these disorders experience, for example, hypersensitivity to sounds, touch, light or movement. Thus, they may react to normal, everyday situations that do not cause the average person any difficulty with excessive irritability, panic, avoidance of touch or contact, withdrawal or fear. Sensory integration dysfunctions also manifest themselves as fatigue, unusually low sensitivity to pain, low self-esteem, delayed speech and motor development, and problems with concentration and motor coordination, among other symptoms. For those diagnosed with this type of disorder, therapy produces good results. It is used to improve their everyday functioning. It supports the development of children with learning difficulties and people with ADHD, autism, FAS, intellectual disabilities and other dysfunctions.
For those interested, more information about sensory integration, symptoms of disorders and therapy is available at: https://www.integracjasensoryczna.org.pl.
Renata Burdosz