Millo, a little crab to teach sport education to little Sardinian pupils
A comic, a book and a short at the heart of a project that will involve almost 50,000 children
A comic strip, a book and a short film poised between reality and fantasy, in the project for children called "Millo Mì...va a scuola", in which the different abilities are told, through sporting practice, as a symbol of pride and not as limits.
Jeff Onorato, president of the Asd Sci Club Saint Tropez, is the creator of this awareness project that will bring "Millo" to over 48 primary schools in Sardinia, to be read by a population of 46,960 young students .
Written, illustrated and filmed documents have been produced in collaboration with the regional councilorship for public education, with the regional school management and with Coni Sardegna, which contain an effective educational message on the delicate subject of prejudices.
«On a practical level it was all too easy, the stage is the Coni school that I have been directing for thirty years now - says Onorato - and the actors are some of my special students, ready to give a splendid and realistic representation of their handicap» .
To complete the cast, one element was still missing, the children's mascot: the little crab named Millo. In this case, his task is deliberately to represent, in a metaphorical key, that part of society that still struggles to accredit talent and autonomy to the world of disability. «I thought of a talking crab whose initial role is that of an unpleasant and incredulous character, an attitude which then changes radically in the end», Onorato points out.
Sport thus becomes the means through which Jeff's students demonstrate to the impertinent crab important concepts related to acceptance, self-esteem and willpower.
"However, sport involves, and is a fundamental tool for aggregating and promoting inclusion, so much so that the percentage of bullying episodes drops radically when children participate in sports projects", explains Salvatore Melis, physical education and sport contact person in the Office regional school.
The magazine has the great objective of showing sport as an indispensable tool for breaking down the barriers not only of physics, but also of thought that still inhabit our society.
Andrea Biancareddu, councilor for public education, speaks of a formidable project «which finally aims to ensure that inclusion is not just a ritual phrase, but something we want to put into practice. By doing sport you learn to suffer together, to fall and to get up again. You learn from discipline, but you learn that we are all the same."
