Shanghai Daily news

Nearly 40 representatives from organizations of people with intellectual disabilities and family organizations from 10 countries and regions yesterday discussed how to improve the daily life of intellectually disabled people.

Co-organized by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific and the China Disabled Persons' Federation, the regional workshop on the empowerment of people with intellectual disabilities opened yesterday at the Shanghai Rehabilitation Center for the Disabled.

Aiming to identify issues of people with intellectual disabilities and their families as well as policies and actions to solve the problems, the three-day workshop is the first of its kind in China to focus on people with intellectual disabilities and their families.

At the opening of the seminar, the video "Rainbow," a personal story of how the Special Olympics changed the life of Qiu Hong, a young student with intellectual disability, was played repeatedly.

"Shanghai is hosting the Special Olympics, which has attracted more than 7,200 athletes from 165 countries and regions worldwide and marked the noteworthy shift of social attitudes towards people with intellectual disabilities, and I'm extremely honored that we are able to organize this workshop along with it," Thelma Kay, director of the emerging social issues division of UNESCAP, said in an opening statement.

"As the success of the Special Olympics indicates, our Asia-Pacific region has been much more aware, compared to a decade ago, of the truism that people with intellectual disabilities are capable in diverse ways and that it is society itself that has been creating and perpetuating many barriers that would prevent their participation in society in both social and economic terms," she said.

Zhang Baoling, executive vice president of the China Association of People with Intellectual Disabilities, their Families and Relatives, outlined the situation of people with intellectual disabilities in China.

"Two-thirds of the 650 million disabled people in the world live in the Asia-Pacific region and China has 82.96 million disabled people, of whom 5.54 million are intellectually challenged," he said.

"Since 2003, China has provided the intellectually disabled with recovery training, education and employment.

By the end of 2005, 64.86 percent of disabled children were enrolled in schools," Zhang said.

All the representatives were taken to the Jiangwan Stadium to watch the closing ceremony of the 2007 Special Olympics World Summer Games last night.

The seminar will continue today and closes tomorrow.