November 2016
In November, the AsIAm Youth Leadership Team met up in St. Andrew’s Resource centre in Dublin city to work on some very interesting topics. Here’s what we did:
We started off with a drama workshop led by Oonagh, where we played a series of games and completed a series of challenges by listening to each other, watching each other’s actions, and paying attention to what was happening. For instance, we stood in a circle, and Oonagh asked a question to someone, but the person to their right had to answer. Great concentration was required to complete this game.
Towards the afternoon, we sat in a circle once more, and we discussed each other’s different sensory needs. At around noon we decided to have lunch, so we got some pizzas in.
In the afternoon, Grainne told us about her 14-year-old son, the difficulties he faces and how he overcomes them. She told us about all the different things that her son enjoys doing, and how he has an incredible memory for certain things. Grainne also told us about a negative experience he once had, when he said something but got a very bad reaction from others, and then did not speak again. We all found Grainne’s story very touching and inspiring, and we all took a lot from it.
Grainne’s story of her son had a particularly didactic element to it; it was that although one may not be able to say (or may choose not to say) anything, that doesn’t mean that they don’t have something to say! This is one of the key messages that we would like the public to know in our next campaign.
Then we discussed the planning of our new campaign, with the assistance of John and Katie. We talked about what it means to be pre-verbal and how we (YLT) are going to provide a voice for those who can’t speak for themselves. This is going to be the focus of our work over the next few months. We also discussed how pre-verbal people can still have their way by using other ways of communicating.
I can definitely say that we got some great work done, as we do every time we meet.
By Ben Rowsome
February 2017
At this meeting we made a lot of progress with coming up with ideas and discussing them. But our main discussion about autism at the moment is about the people who are pre-verbal, i.e. people how cannot speak and we want to show that speaking is not the only way to communicate. We also looked at how poetry can be an effective way to spread awareness of autism by reading a few poems about autism.
We also had a new leader coming into the team. Her name is Fiona. We also met John and Andrew from an organisation called Gheel, they came in to hear about all of our ideas that we came up with so far and they told us how they help adults work with adults and young people, particularly those who are pre-verbal. We are going to be working with Gheel on our new campaign over the next few months.
We also discussed the film called ‘Life, Animated’, which is about a non-verbal boy called Owen and how his parents try to get him to speak. One example is by using Disney animated films as Owen really likes watching them and learns the dialogue very quickly.
We were also thinking about how we can update our website. We also had to come up with all the different things that can be put up on a website. We had to decide what role we might like to have and think about which of the following ideas we would like to learn to do. Examples include videos, blogs, photos, podcasts, drama and social media content.
It was nice seeing the team again, I also feel that we got a lot done during the meeting and as always, I had a great time at the meeting.
By Adam Greenan
