ParaPraia resumes assisted sea bathing activities for people with disabilities and reduced mobility

The sea is for everyone! This message reflects the ideal of the ParaPraia project, which reaches its 8th edition after 2 years with activities suspended due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The first weekend of assisted bathing received around 60 bathers on Saturday and Sunday at Ondina beach, a traditional spot at ParaPraia. Since the first edition, the Bahiana has been the project's technical manager, training volunteers and providing teachers and collaborators, in order to provide sea bathing for people with disabilities and reduced mobility, the action's target audience. In this first weekend, ParaPraia had the participation of 28 teachers and 49 volunteers, including students from all the institution's courses. ParaPraia will be held on the 4th, 5th, 11th and 12th of March, at Praia da Ondina.

"ParaPraia is our first extension project of the year and provides our students with an experience of inclusion, health promotion and the exercise of citizenship based on an expanded concept of health, understanding that health is leisure, income, work and is to take care of the body, mind and spirit. Here we welcome people with disabilities of different ages, from Bahia and outside the state. It is an extremely inclusive project in its essence. It is also an opportunity for students to live with these people's families in a multifunctional way, as students and professors from all courses participate", declared the dean of Extension at Bahiana, Prof. Carolina Pedroza. Besides the Bahiana, the Municipal Secretariat for Social Promotion, Combating Poverty, Sports and Leisure (SEMPRE) and several private sector companies are also partners in the program.

For student Ana Paula Gomes Santos, from the 8th semester of the Physiotherapy course, the project provides learning and exchange of experiences. "When I participated for the first time, I still didn't have much experience, so it was all very new to me. And having contact with people with disabilities is an opportunity, because we don't see them so much in the environments we frequent. So, as it is an audience that I serve, it was very good to have this first contact because you get to know the stories of incredible people, exchange knowledge... It is very good". The bather and fan of the program Luiza Maria Pereira Oliveira says that she was missing the project so much and that she had been posting photos of the old editions on her social networks, as she could no longer wait for ParaPraia. “I really miss ParaPraia, because I only swim in the sea when I have a project. Because of my rheumatoid arthritis, I don't swim in the sea alone: ​​if I fall, I don't get up. So I have to have help. And the project helps us a lot,” she says.