On the eve of World Down Syndrome Day, an international campaign encourages Internet users to take pictures of themselves with mismatched socks in order to highlight the difference.
The difference is nothing to be ashamed of; it is a wealth of the human species. The campaign being organized on social networks chants this message, on the eve of World Down’s Syndrome Day.
To illustrate this idea, the Down Syndrome International (DSI) association invites all those who wish to post pictures of mismatched socks, under the hashtag # SocksBattle4DS (“Sock battle for Down syndrome,” the other name for Down’s syndrome).
# socksbattle4DS pic.twitter.com/xgpiKjF4t3
– Dragan Sabrina (@sabdragan) March 19, 2015
“We would like the others to be our friends”
The campaign was widely taken up and greeted by French associations. For Emmanuel Laloux, president of the association Les Amis d’Éléonore, it makes it possible to approach in a “playful” and “humorous” way the social perception of people with Down’s syndrome, reports AFP.
Her daughter, Éléonore, 29, with Down’s syndrome, also welcomes this campaign which can lead people “to change their outlook on Down’s syndrome”. “We are not like the others, but we would like to live like the others, we would like the others to be our friends to be less alone,” she says. A message also hammered out in his book Triso and so!
Trisomy 21 affects 70,000 people in France, according to the French Association for Research on Trisomy 21 (AFRT). It is the main genetic cause of mental deficit.
.
