On 2 April, World Autism Awareness Day, Ljubljana joined the Light It Up Blue international initiative.

For a considerable period of time, the City of Ljubljana has been striving to improve the quality of treatment given to children with special needs, and thus co-finances programmes of supplementary education and training professionals, especially teachers and leaders who teach and work with children with special needs and their parents, thereby enabling children with special needs to receive quality education and be included in regular primary education programmes. The Janez Levec Training Institute, founded by the City of Ljubljana and celebrating its centenary this year, is a valuable partner in this field.

On World Autism Awareness Day, 2 April, the City of Ljubljana joined the Light It Up Blue international initiative. Therefore, overnight from Sunday 1 April to Monday 2 April and from Monday 2 April to Tuesday 3 April, from midnight to 7am, Dragon Bridge and Ljubljana Castle were illuminated in blue.

On Monday 2 April 2012, at Ljubljana City Hall’s Central Atrium, there was the opening of an exhibition of creative work by children and young people with autistic spectrum disorders from Ljubljana primary schools and the Janez Levec Institute. As part of the opening, there was also the presentation of a book about a boy with Asperger’s syndrome entitled ‘How it is to be me’.

The City of Ljubljana would like this event to draw the attention of the city’s residents to the difficulties faced by people with autism, who remain stigmatised in society, while public awareness about this lifelong developmental disorder is low.

This May, the City of Ljubljana, together with the Janez Levec Training Institute is organising in Ljubljana one of the largest professional meetings in the field of work with autistic children, a conference with Tony Atwood, a leading global expert in the field of autism.