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A sports programme to cheer up the mentally handicapped and the deaf marked the end of a sports activity design competition.

  The Outstanding Sport Design Award - part of the Hongkong Telecom Go! Sport Programme organised by the Hong Kong Sports Development Board - will be discontinued next year - after a three-year run.

   Each competition produced six winning projects, and the 18 winning projects - all aimed at promoting sports among students - have been documented and sent to all schools for reference.

  This year, a project titled 'The Ambassadors of Vigour' by Tai Po Sam Yuk Secondary School won the outstanding award.

  Principal Lee Shum-chun and physical education master Lo Ting-fai received the award on behalf of Yu Cheong-ning, designer of the project.

  The eight-month programme encompassed two leadership training camps and various activities, including ball games and water sports.

  Two of the student volunteers, fourth-former Sin Wing-yi and sixth-former Tang Yuet-fong, said the programme helped them bridge the gap with the mentally handicapped and deaf students.

  'We underwent a leadership training camp in which we learnt how to interact with them,' Wing-yi said.

  'At first both sides - the normal and the disadvantaged students - were nervous. But once we made an effort to talk to them, we found that they were as normal as us.'    More than 200 students (Form Three, Four and Six) from the Tai Po school were involved in the project.

    They organised ball games and other activities for a total of 230 disadvantaged students.

   Yuet-fong said they had to learn some basic sign language before meeting the students from the Hong Kong School of the Deaf.

  'Sometimes the basic sign language we knew wasn't enough for us to communicate,' Yuet-fong said.

   'But they can read lips, which made it easier for them to understand us. And sometimes we had to settle for jotting down what we wanted to say.'   Mr Lo, who worked with Mr Yu throughout the project, said the school would continue this kind of sports activities in the future.

   'It's a good course to mix sports with community service, and help students understand themselves more,' he said.

  'We plan to incorporate activities for the disabled and the elderly in our programme next year. We will continue doing this, even without the competition.'   Their project cost more than $58,000, with sponsorship from the HKSDB, the Social Department and the Anti-Narcotics Committee. Mr Yu received two round-trip air tickets to Europe, while the school was awarded $20,000 for future sports development.



Sports project helps the deaf