Freya is an incredible entrepreneur and sibling to someone with Autism. In this blog she tells us about her brother Dian, why she wanted to make a difference and her initiative “All About Autism”
My name is Freya O’Horo and my brother Dian has autism. I’ve always been very protective of Dian because I felt that the world was very cruel to him. He could start his day as a very happy, energetic boy and end it being very upset and hurt. This usually happened when we went places. People would constantly judge him whether he spoke loudly or started running and jumping. It affected him and you could see it did. I always thought that if people could just learn more about autism they’d stop staring at the boy lying on the shop floor crying and think “maybe he isn’t having a tantrum, maybe he’s having a meltdown”.
For my Transition Year in St. Joseph’s Secondary School, Foxford I was given the opportunity to take part in the Student Enterprise Awards programme. For this competition you had to set up a business, make a product and sell it. I saw this opportunity as a way to help my brother. I wanted to create a little booklet to help people understand autism so I teamed up with my friend whose aunt has autism and we created All About Autism. From November ’15 to February ’16 we sold 100s of booklets in our community and to national schools. However, we felt that young children couldn’t benefit from these booklets so we created The Children’s Activity Book. This book told the story of a boy with autism and the family’s perspective. It was important for us to get the message across that people with autism may act differently from us but this is something that must be accepted. Overall, we won 6 awards and sold over 500 books.
When the school year ended, All About Autism was supposed to end too but I couldn’t do that. There was still so much I wanted to do and for that I kept it going. My partner left and I knew that I had a lot to do on my own but seeing a difference in the community for my little brother meant that I couldn’t give up. I started a website so people could buy the books from there and this encouraged me to start a blog. I share whatever I think may be helpful to other autism families and Dian’s progress and fun days. All About Autism has been one of the greatest things I’ve done in my life because it made me feel like I was no longer helpless to Dian. I finally felt I was making him proud.
As a sister of someone with autism I know you can feel helpless and that you feel there’s not much you can do but something as simple as making a fort with lights inside or jumping on the trampoline and pretending to be a monster can make the biggest difference to them. And when he smiles back at me it makes all the hard days worth it.
Thank you for taking time to read my story and if you’d like to have a look at my website, its www.all-about-autism.co.uk.
