Fourteen-year-old Lina Zhu signed up for a Bollywood dance class at the Passport 2 Play event at Eric Hamber secondary Wednesday morning “because it’s fun.”
This Grade 8 student who’s enrolled in Life Skills at Gladstone secondary told the Courier and her support worker Shane MacLean she enjoyed dancing with a partner during the hour-long class most, but touching other people’s hands least.
Students in white Passport 2 Play T-shirts that read “Athlete” on the back wiggled their hips, linked one arm with a partner and shook their fingers in the air in time with upbeat Indian music.
“Did you learn any new dance moves?” MacLean asked Zhu, who nodded affirmatively.
“I know I did,” he quipped.
Zhu was one of 200 cognitively and physically disabled students from secondary schools across the Vancouver school district who gathered for the day-long sporting event organized by the Vancouver District Students’ Council and Hamber’s leadership students.
Athletes paraded into Hamber’s gym school-by-school to the sounds of high-energy music and handclaps, giving students in blue volunteer T-shirts high-fives while a teacher got Hamber teens who would have been participating in P.E. at the time doing the wave.
Inspired by Surrey’s long-running AIM Games, Chris Fuouco, a since retired teacher and wrestling coach at John Oliver secondary, organized Passport 2 Play events at JO in 2009 and 2010 in the lead up to the Paralympic Games in Vancouver, but then the funding for the event evaporated, according to Nick Milum, district student council co-president who was the school board’s first student trustee last year.
Milum revived the event at Hamber in 2013.
“I played sports since I was four, I played soccer since I was four, I played basketball for five years, I played volleyball. Sport has always been a huge part of my life and I know that these kids don’t get that opportunity,” Milum said. “And it hits closer to home, my dad is quadriplegic and so he was very involved in the disabled sports world, so I have a lot of connection to that.”
Students could try activities that included basketball, wrestling, boccia, track and field, soccer and softball at Passport 2 Play. Each student received information about organizations that provide sporting opportunities to people with disabilities.
“There’s a fantastic disabled sport world that’s out there, especially here in B.C.” Milum said.
The 17-year-old Grade 12 student worries secondary students are too segregated in schools. Milum said special needs students at Hamber, particularly junior students, remain in the same classroom much of the day.
“They don’t have chance to get involved,” he said.
Shiamak’s Victory Arts Foundation ran the dance classes. Choreographer and performer Shiamak Davar started the foundation in India 15 years ago and in Canada in 2009, offering dance as therapy classes to kids with special needs. Two men with Down syndrome, Nick Ramsay and Gal Stevens, led the class alongside the dance instructor Wednesday. Stephanie Lightfoot, the foundation’s community resources coordinator, said both men performed at B.C. Place during the Times of India Film Awards in 2013.
Colleen Cruz, student support assistant from Lord Byng, said three of that school’s six students who participated in Passport 2 Play signed up for dance.
“They love to dance,” she said. “The kids look forward to [Passport 2 Play] every year.”
crossi@vancourier.com
@Cheryl_Rossi
