A Call to Be Fearless

“Last year, there were over 53,000 Special Olympics competitions in more than 170 countries and every one was a lesson in dignity and empowerment.  At over 800 of those games, athletes not only played sports but also participated in health screenings, education, and referral services making Special Olympics the largest public health outreach effort in the world.” cont.

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Over on Special Olympics International’s blog, Chairman and CEO Tim Shriver highlights the gap that still exists between the healthcare community and people with intellectual disabilities. “The International AIDS Conference was held this year for the first time in the US since 1990,” Shriver writes. “But like every one before it, there was little attention to the needs of people with intellectual disabilities (ID).”

Here at Special Olympics Massachusetts, we’re constantly working to find ways to better serve and advocate for people with intellectual disabilities within the Bay State. That being said, it’s always important to remember that we’re all a part of this global movement.

In the words of Martin Luther King Jr., delivered at the Oberlin College commencement ceremony of 1965:

“Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be—this is the interrelated structure of reality.”