The year 2003 was designated the European Year of People with Disabilities (EYPD) by the European Commission. It is sometimes called the European Year of Disabled People.
The European Commission set aside 12 million euros to recognise the European Year of People with Disabilities.
The Year was officially launched under the Greek Presidency in Athens on 26 January 2003. The opening ceremony in Athens was co-hosted by Julie Fernandez.
Famous quotes containing the words european, year, people and/or disabilities:
“European society has always been divided into classes in a way that American society never has been. A European writer considers himself to be part of an old and honorable tradition—of intellectual activity, of letters—and his choice of a vocation does not cause him any uneasy wonder as to whether or not it will cost him all his friends. But this tradition does not exist in America.”
—James Baldwin (1924–1987)
“A whole village-full of sensuous emotion, scattered abroad all the year long, surged here in a focus for an hour. The forty hearts of those waving couples were beating as they had not done since, twelve months before, they had come together in similar jollity. For the time Paganism was revived in their hearts, the pride of life was all in all, and they adored none other than themselves.”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)
“How much better when the whole land is a garden, and the people have grown up in the bowers of a paradise.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“A child is not a salmon mousse. A child is a temporarily disabled and stunted version of a larger person, whom you will someday know. Your job is to help them overcome the disabilities associated with their size and inexperience so that they get on with being that larger person.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)