The ‘My opinion, my vote’ project recently came to an end. The project’s aim was to support people with learning disabilities to exert their right to vote and to political participation, in accordance with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

The local partners in the project were the Equal Partners Foundation and the the Programme for Inclusive Education within the Department of Psychology of the University’s Faculty of Education.

The project was financed by the European Commission through the Lifelong Learning programme, Grundtvig sub-programme.

The six European organisations taking part in the project held their final meeting in Barcelona, Spain, on September 27 and 28, at which they shared their thoughts on the project and the educational tools produced, evaluated the events organised and made plans for future actions to continue to support disabled people’s right to vote.

During the project various materials were produced to support people with learning disabilities to make an informed choice when they exercised their right to vote.

These included brochures, posters and web banners; guidelines for making political manifestos easier to read; a ‘dictionary’ of words used in politics, and an educational program to help people understand what politics is, how to form a personal opinion, what the EU and other public authorities are, and how to vote.

Other actions taken during the project were a survey on good practices in the field of education and awareness about the exercise of political rights, and another survey on an international sample of 100 people with learning disabilities to explore their opinions and difficulties about the matter, and to analyse their evolution during the project.

All materials and outputs of the project are available on www.myopinionmyvote.eu website in English, Danish, Hungarian, Italian, Maltese and Spanish.

The other participating organisations in the project, which was coordinated by Associazione Italiana Persone Down from Italy, were the Facultat de Psicologia Ciences de l’Educaciò i de l’Esport Blanquerna Universitat Ramon Lull and the Funaciò Projecte Aura from Spain, Down Syndrome Ireland, Sio2 srl from Italy, Down Alapitvany from Hungary, and the Centre for Ligebehandling af Handicappede from Denmark.

Equal Partners invites interested parties to get in touch with it to continue to raise awareness regarding the rights of persons with learning disabilities.

For further information visit the website www.equalpartnersmalta.org.