Get and stay mobile together!

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 65 million people worldwide require a wheelchair. 20 million affected people, 25% of whom are children, do not receive this aid.* Unfortunately, medical provision of assistive devices is not satisfactorily regulated in every country of the world. The welfare system in many countries does not cover the necessary costs and people with disabilities are faced with having to pay for necessary aids themselves. However, wheelchairs are unaffordable for many people around the world.

The SARIAS Foundation wants to support some of these people and is giving them mobility by providing wheelchairs free of charge to disabled people in need. Be it active wheelchairs, rehab buggies or children’s wheelchairs, the SARIAS Foundation regularly selects the most suitable mobility equipment for children, adolescents and disadvantaged people who have had to give up their mobility for various reasons. The resources are not distributed at random; we carefully determine who requires which resources in advance. Transportation of the wheelchairs is also organised by the SARIAS Foundation. So far, children and young people in Africa and Turkey have received their first or new wheelchairs through this channel. This brings a great deal of relief and independence to their families. It enables children and families to participate in social activities, creates opportunities and helps them to put inactivity behind them.

*(source: Guidelines on the provision of manual wheelchairs in less-resourced settings – World Health Organization 2008)

“Tell me a story!”

Fairy tales are stories that encourage and convey values. They offer possible solutions for conflict situations and children identify with the fairy tale heroes.

Fairy tales are an essential building block in a child’s development. They are particularly important in intercultural education: children intuitively perceive the similarities and the unifying elements of fairy tales more strongly than the differences and the perhaps unfamiliar. The stories help children from different cultures get to know each other and discover just how many similarities we all share.

The aim of the SARIAS Foundation is to enable people to discover fairy tales from different cultures in Germany. We are working towards this goal in various projects.

The SARIAS Foundation fairy tale book series

One of our major projects is to publish a fairy tale picture book series as a foundation, filled with fairy tales from a wide variety of cultures and which are still unknown in Germany.

For the first volume we have selected an Ethiopian fairy tale and translated it into German. Fairy tale books need pictures, of course, and illustrator Julie Chovin has created these wonderful pictures for us.

The books have been printed since October 2019 and have since been distributed to children free of charge at several events. If you too would like to receive our book free of charge, please write to us!

For the second volume a Chinese fairy tale is already ready and waiting for some beautiful illustrations. “The Two Melons” is about a good and a bad woman. They both experience a big surprise when they cut open a huge melon… that’s all we’ll reveal!

Telling, acting out, playing, and performing fairy tales…
Narrative and play project in daycare centres and primary schools

When fairy tales are told or acted out, they are easy even for children with little knowledge of German or with other language deficits to understand. We are therefore committed to ensuring that fairy tales become an integral part of language promotion in daycare centres and primary schools: their potential and unifying power can contribute a great deal to providing culturally sensitive education. The SARIAS Foundation is currently working on a new project for this purpose, and you will soon be able to find out more about it here.