Inclusion and Integration - Involve Autism

Every year Dublin City Council encourages a week long celebration of inclusion and integration. This year it was on 6th-12th of November. I was fortunate to be able to attend a brilliant Involve Autism event in Terenure Rugby Club. Miriam Kenny is a passionate advocate alongside volunteers at Involve Autism, for the educational rights of children with autism and for the development of better communities that meet everyone’s diverse needs. My take away from this event is that we can all do more to help others, it was inspirational, emotional but most of all positive that we are going in the right direction even if at times progress is slow.

I was delighted to meet Evelyn from Finding Charlie’s Voice communicaitons boards at the event. Terenure Community Support & Integration has purchase a few communication boards for installation in the Evergreen Club as well as a local school. These boards not only help non verbal autism children and adults to communicate but they are also benefical for deaf people, migrants whose first language is not English, toddlers who have not yet started talking. You will see more of these communication boards around Dublin city and suburbs, in particular in playgrounds. It is initiatives like Finding Charlie’s Voice that go a long way to helping people feel included in their community. You can find out more about Finding Charlie’s Voice at https://www.findingcharliesvoice.ie/

Involve Autism also launched their website at the event and I encourage everyone to take a look at is an excellent resource of information and contacts. It saddened me greatly to see how few schools in the Dublin 6/6W had support classes for children with Autism and I hope to see this change. Check out their website at https://involveautism.ie/

Daithí de Róiste, Dublin’s Lord Mayor spoke at the Involve Autism event as did Adam Harris from AsIam. I was delighted to hear that the Lord Mayor is championing kindness and inclusion as part of his agenda for the year and I hope to see more of his initiatives in action. Sadly the news of late at home and abroad has been very upsetting and full of hate and violence, it is important to remember there is more good in the world and it costs nothing to be kind.

Be kind to yourself through a mindful moment of a cup of tea, a walk, a chat with a friend and be kind to each other.

Terenure Community Support & Integration was a little behind on it’s own inclusion activities but please do read about our wreath making and makers market events which occurred on November 18th and 19th and were a beautiful display of kindness, generosity, friendship and inclusion.