HIFA-Romania Association organized between 7th-11th October 2013 in Târgu Mureș An Interactive Island for Disabled People in the Community within the program Hidden Pearls III. It was an interactive week presenting an art exhibition with the aim to promote the artwork of disabled people. The main objective of this event was to draw the attention of preschool children, pupils, university students and make them aware of the various disablity conditions. Visitors had the chance to try out different helping tools and to experiment what it is like to be a disabled, deaf or blind. They had the chance to find out stories of famous disabled people and to try out helping tools. Concomitantly, they could ”loan” from our „living library” a disabled person for discussions.

The motto of this week was: What is it like to be a disabled person?

We had 488 visitors aged between 5-22 (preschool children, pupils and university students). These 5 days turned out not to be enough in order to satisfy all the requests.

Our success was gained due to the experts and volunteers (students from Sapientia and Petru Maior Universities) involved in this program. We would like to thank for their work in realizing this program.

We would like to grateful to the people from the Association of the Deaf and Blind as well as to Motivation, Romania, because without them we couldn’t have obtained the same results.

Our program will be reorganized and continued for a larger number of people in order to satisfy all the requests of those people, groups or school’s personnel, who are ready for a radical change, for the development of tolerance and acceptance.