Ability Over Disability: QF’s Inclusive Swimming Program

Families of all nationalities from across Qatar benefit from the specialized coaching offered to participants of all ages

Ability Friendly Tap Story - Cover Slide

Ability Friendly sports programs are a vehicle for inclusiveness – they play a key role in helping build communities by instilling a sense of belonging in people whose needs are often overlooked.

Swimming is the most popular sport in Qatar Foundation’s (QF) Ability Friendly Program, with a total of 97 swimmers currently enrolled – almost a quarter of whom are Qataris.

Salem Saeed Aleida is a seven-year-old Qatari boy who was diagnosed with autism at the age of two and joined QF’s Ability Friendly Swimming Program one year later.

Age is truly just a number in this program. Bushra Dia, 35, is the oldest participant in the ability friendly swimming classes.

“She cannot walk, she cannot sit or do anything with her hands, but she can float,” says her mother, Wafa Ahmed.

Dia suffers from muscle spasms all over her body, and so she finds being in the water very relaxing.

“The 60 minutes she spends at the pool every week is the only time she is out of the wheelchair,” says her mother. “These sessions are the highlight of her week, every week.”

Joseph Ryan is a 17-year-old with a rare disorder called agenesis of the corpus callosum (ACC). It is a birth defect that affects his brain and, as a result, he has problems with coordination between the right and left side of his body, so swimming does not come easily to him.

Today, Ryan, who could hardly put his head in the water when he started, can swim an entire lap. His mother attributes his tremendous progress to his swimming coach and the way the program is run.

Four-year-old Albert Opoku, who has autism, is among the youngest participants in the program. Clad in a swimming diaper, Opuku can’t wait to get in the pool and once inside, he wants to be left alone.

In addition to swimming, the program is also teaching Opuku such life skills as listening to instructions and taking command, which, his mother says, “are very important for him to learn at his age”.

In addition to being inclusive of ability, the program also reflects financial inclusion. QF’s Qader Award is a need-based financial award that is granted to 30 families each year, giving the awardee an entire year’s worth of classes within QF’s Ability Friendly Program free of charge.

Mindful of the need for more such programs, QF’s Ability Friendly swimming team is working toward a plan that will allow them to train and certify other swimming coaches throughout the country who can then offer ability friendly classes at their own clubs.