AN INSPIRATIONAL partially-sighted Paralympian is heading to York next week to share her skills with visually-impaired young people.

Georgie Bullen will visit next Tuesday to teach a group of visually-impaired and fully-sighted volunteers how to play goalball - her Paralympic sport, in which participants compete in teams of three, and try to throw a ball that has bells embedded in it into the opponents' goal. They will then pass on this skill to people in northern Ghana.

Georgie, who represented Team GB in the 2012 Paralympics, is training the volunteers for their overseas placement in partnership with York-based development charity International Service and international youth volunteering programme ICS.

From March, the volunteers will spend eight weeks in Ghana working on a project called REACT. They will work with Georgie to tackle disability stigma, using goalball as their tool.

In rural Ghana, people with disabilities are especially likely to live in poverty, International Service said. The social stigma around disability means many are kept out of school, out of jobs, and out of their community, the charity added.

Georgie who will carry out the training at Clifton Green Primary School said: “REACT is using sport to challenge people’s perceptions of disability in both Ghana and here in the UK.

“The project is based on the message Rethink, Review, React. We all need to re-think our attitudes, review the way we see the world, and react against injustice. And the training in York is the first step in making that happen in these communities.”

Once they arrive in Ghana, these volunteers will train and coach local people to play goalball. They will also use radio and community appearances to tackle disability stigma and spread the message that people with disabilities deserve to be treated equally.

Nikita Slate, a REACT volunteer who is visually impaired, said: “I’ve always wanted to travel by myself, but I’ve never been confident enough. If you’d told me a year ago that this is what I’d be doing, I wouldn’t have believed you. But now it’s just weeks away, I’m really looking forward to meeting the Ghanaian volunteers, getting to work, and making a difference.”