Welcome to our Community Team Intern Sophie Meegan
Sophie is from Couty Louth and is a third-year student at the University of Galway studying Politics and Geography with Human Rights. Sophie has a strong interest in disability rights and advocacy, and joined DFI for her student placement.
Sophie is working with the community team and reports that she is truly learning what a bottom-up approach to human rights looks like in practice. She is very passionate about the work and actively listening to and learning from, people with lived experience.
It’s a great pleasure to welcome Sophie on board and she is already involved in very exciting and important work on the ground. Sophie will be with us until the summer and we are very grateful to have such a great colleague as part of the team.
Self-Advocacy Leaders Network
The next meeting of the Self-Advocacy Leaders Network is expected to take place on 2 April on MS Teams from 11am to 1 pm. Invitations have been sent. If you are not receiving mail about Network meetings and you are responsible for leading self advocacy in your organisation, please contact PJ Cleere on pjcleere@disability-federation.ie .
Self-Advocacy Toolkit in person workshops.
Whether you are new to self-advocacy or already using the DFI Self Advocacy Toolkit, these in-person workshops are for you. We will be holding at least three such workshops for members in three locations, Galway, Dublin and Cork this year. The first session will be in Galway in late April and notice of the final date will be circulated to you al. so do keep an eye on e mails.
The workshops will be a participative space where those of you who use the toolkit, either as a step by step resource, or as a reference in your work, will have the opportunity to discuss how you use it, share any positive experiences or highlight any challenges you have encountered. It will also be a space for you to share any learning or new ideas about what might be included in the toolkit going forward.
Media and Spokesperson Training
The ever popular media training is being offered again to our members. It is anticipated this will take place in the latter part of June. Again you will be notified in due course of the exact date and location, which is expected to be in Dublin. More to follow.
That’s all for this edition. I hope you found it of interest. If you have any queries or would like to follow up on any aspect of the articles please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Make Way Day
Make Way Day is DFI's campaign for national access awareness. Until this year it has been held on the last Friday in September.
In response to requests form members to reconsider the date, DFI have started the year by changing Make Way Day to the last Friday of May, which this year falls on the 29th. So this year Make Way Day takes place on 29 May.
For a few years now, members have commented that September has increasingly become a very busy time of year. Organisations are busy with their own pre-budget campaigns, and in some cases, it is also the time when members hold their own fundraising or awareness campaigns as well.
The month of May was recommended to us as the most preferable, and so this year, we notified our members, partners and stakeholders of the change.
All 31 local authorities and local community groups continue to support the Make Way Day. Our colleague Pierce Richardson is leading the campaign this year. If you need any information about how to get involved, or if your organisation needs stickers, or other resources, please contact Pierce at
Piercerichardson@disability-federation.ie
Invitation to share your news and self-advocacy stories
As always you are welcome to contribute to the newsletter. If you have a story about your self-advocacy work or work in mainstream community, and you would like to share it, or if you have plans for an activity, or need to let members know about an upcoming event, please contact me about getting your contribution included in the following editions.
Best wishes PJ
pjcleere@disability-federation.ie
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