Year 11 & 12 VCAL Presentation

On May 6th, ProjectABLE came to present to the Year 11 and 12 VCAL cohort about living with a disability and disability rights. The presenters were Scott, who was born with underdeveloped eyes and developed blindness. Scott taught the students how to offer help to someone with a disability, and talked about the importance of independence. Natasha was involved in a car accident when she was 6, she suffered a brain injury and physical ailments, however she is able to complete year 12 and TAFE courses with teacher aids. John talked about his OCD, depression and anxiety, and explained how living with a mental illness can be just as disabling as a physical barrier is. Andrew was involved in a motorcycle accident 4 years earlier, which left him dead for nearly 20 minutes.  He suffered an acute brain injury (ABI) and also physical disability with his legs now mostly made up of titanium.  Andrew explained that the recommended defibrillator was 8-9, but miraculously his emergency responders used the defibrillator 10 times and he was revived.  The purpose was to emphasise that all the presenters may have a disability but they also have families, fiancés, children, jobs, hobbies, interests.

We were all given a mars bar or a chuppa chup with the two rules, we were not allowed to use our dominate hand (1) or our mouth (2) to open and eat.  This was an interesting task and gave an insight in having to ask for help to do a simple task.  It is so important that if you see someone struggling (anyone but particularly a person with disability) that you ask before offering help.  Most people with disability are happy to have help offered which they can then choose to accept or decline.  However, when a person with a disability has someone just assuming that they need help or a helpless, this is where the offence comes.

Hearing about these stories and real life struggles that people with disabilities face help us to understand how we can be responsible for defending disability rights as an abled person, as we are all human beings at the end of the day. Disability rights are human rights. We understand now how having a disability doesn’t make you any less capable of achieving great things and working in amazing jobs and careers. The students left this presentation interested in learning more and feeling inspired to be active citizens in the world.

We thank Mrs McDonald for the opportunity.

Excerpts from Trinity, Ari, Cassandra, Joshua, Paris and Zac.