People with Disabilities – People like You and Me

In Germany, there is no natural interaction between people with and without disabilities. Encounters are often distanced or tense. The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities calls for and documents the worldwide recognition of disabled people as fully-fledged members of society.

DCV/ Mathias Bothor

Germany has acceded to the Convention and intends to implement it.

The aim of the Caritas campaign 2011 is to make it clear that inclusion – in other words, an equitable coexistence of all human beings – is possible from the start. In contrast to integration, in which a foreign person integrates him- or herself into an (unchanged) society, inclusion creates diversity. In other words: there are a lot of people in Germany, they are all different, some have a disability that shapes their lives but this is not the decisive point in every situation. The human being counts – and not his or her disability, size, character or origin.

Not everyone has reached this stage of awareness and it is also not put into practice everywhere. There is a need to catch up in this area, in our daily working lives, in playschools and schools, in clubs and parishes – even at Caritas. But the aim is clear: together we create our society – a society that is colourful and alive. Caritas institutions and associations will show how this can be achieved, through its many events in 2011.

“Nobody's perfect” is integrated into the three-year Initiative of Caritas for Self-Determined Inclusion.