„"The Mountains Will Connect Us. Together We Develop Social Tourism" is a two-year project dedicated to people with disabilities, for whom and with whom we have been consistently building our tourism offerings for several years.

Our project focuses on social tourism and issues such as fostering professional activity, self-advocacy, and active respite care. Our activities targeted two groups at risk of exclusion: people with disabilities and their families, as well as caregivers. The project area covered Lower Silesia.

Since 2019, when our adventure with the "Connecting Us Mountains" project began, we have been working tirelessly to improve the quality of life for people with disabilities. Through our trips, we enable them to reach places previously beyond their physical reach. Listening to the needs of this special group, we continue and expand our mountain tourism initiatives. There is still much work to be done in this area, and there are still areas that require development and support. This is how the idea for the "Connecting Us Mountains" project emerged!

What happened during the project?

The mountains will connect us This is another step in our efforts to make mountain tourism accessible to people with disabilities, and importantly, consider it in the context of implementing new forms of respite care. Parents and guardians of people with disabilities have been engaged in self-advocacy activities, addressed to local governments and publicly during regional and national industry events.

People with disabilities were employed to inventory the Sudetes trails and also completed internships in the project's administrative and promotional activities. All project participants and volunteers received skills support in the form of free training to prepare them for project tasks. People with disabilities, their parents, and caregivers also received mentoring and the opportunity to work individually with trainers.

The project was complemented by networking activities between entities involved in social tourism and respite care from across Poland – this is the first such network to purposefully connect entities operating in both of these areas.