AITA ONLUS Project

Inclusion of youngsters with autisms spectrum disorders in the cities of Milan, Rome and Catania.

THE PROJECT

Milan Foundation has supported the 2013 Summer Camp of the Project AITA NPO
Thanks to the sponsors of the “NUTRILITE Tennis Challenge – adidas Cup,” Milan Foundation has supported the Project AITA NPO Summer Camps 2013.Sport weeks were organized In the cities of Milan, Rome and Catania, which were attended by children aged 6 to 18 years with autism spectrum disorder. The project offers an opportunity for integration, inclusion and promotion of social interaction.The Project Aita non-profit organization was established in Catania in 2001. Today, it operates through the AITA Summer Camp project, also in Rome. Attention is given to serious diseases whose onset is frequent in children: autistic disorder, in particular, but also learning disorders, attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity and epilepsy. All conditions, as well as having a major impact, often result in considerable difficulty for the individual, family and in society.The AITA Summer Camp is part of the most important initiatives undertaken by the association. The beneficiaries are traced through a close collaboration with the territorial UO Infantile Neuropsychiatry, which the actual taking charge happens. The main goal of the Camps is to increase the opportunities for reciprocal exchange, in a natural setting, detached from the world of disability that interacts with disability, and to promote, through the skills and experience of the experts, the chances of social experimentation and then increase this kind of ability in a protected and aware environment.AITA staff pay particular attention to the quality of the moments when emotions and attention are shared between children with typical development and those with autism, helping the latter to learn and communicate in an assertive way, developing, however, through imitation, skills and coping strategies to achieve their goals. Tutors-psychologists, in fact, are integrated with the instructors of the associated sporting facilities to increase the sense of efficacy of the child, who cannot perceive a targeted tutoring as peers who learn typically can, but who still receive recognized individual support. This is allowed only if you work as a team, if all the information circulates around the group and if there is clear role definition, allowing the organisation of every detail of every day of the campus.Aita Summer Camp Project aims to pursue one of the main objectives of the Aita Association Project, namely reducing the stigma towards children with disabilities in the area of neurological disorders and behavioural problems. According to Aita, sport is conceived as a moment of communicative exchange and is socially important and as the main physiological drive for the entire developmental age.