Careers Wales have presented Disability Sport Wales with fantastic artwork produced by pupils at their annual What Next event.
Every year Careers Wales invite young people with learning difficulties and/or disabilities to the fantastic What Next? event, held at Merthyr Tydfil Leisure Centre. Participants are given the opportunity to experience practical, vocational tasters with the aim to raise awareness of post-school options for young people with learning disabilities.
At this year’s event Pippin Designs worked with pupils to create three images of Welsh Paralympic Champions Aled Davies, Rob Davies and Hollie Arnold in action during Rio 2016.
On Friday 17th March, our Table Tennis Paralympic Champion Rob Davies received the paintings on behalf of DSW at the Sport Wales National Centre. Pupils from The Marion Centre in the Bishop of Llandaff High School presented Rob with the portraits during a training session. The pupils were able to watch Rob in action as he trained for The International Slovenian Open and later took part in an intimate Q+A session.
Speaking at the event, Mark Owen Head of Service Delivery at Careers Wales said “It was good to see Rob training because that is very inspiring for the young people and that is what we want for them. Every year at What Next we try to invite some celebrities to come along and inspire young people, and to finish it off today with a presentation is a real bonus”.
Geraint Thompson, Assistant Head of The Marion Centre said “many of the pupils contributed to creating the paintings and were happy having completed them. However, since they found out they had the opportunity to present them to Rob himself, the excitement in The Marion Centre has been very high. It’s been a great event and I know all of the students have loved meeting Rob”.
Thank you to all those that participated in the presentation, we are honoured to receive the paintings!
Listen here to Geraint Thompson, Mark Owen, the pupils and Rob Davies talk about the event:
http://bit.ly/2nISePh
