Tara Elliffe, Genny Haines and Tom Maxwell, alongside FRANS CEO Jerry McNamara and employee Thom Calma, will visit Nairobi for one-and-a-half weeks, including the three-day congress on June 10-13.
The event is an opportunity for people with intellectual disabilities, families, disability rights activists and professionals to come together and help promote the importance of self-advocacy leadership, reach out to governments and policy-makers and build relationships with congress attendees from different countries.
FRANS will assist in funding the cost of travel and congress expenses for the candidates. They will also run a series of fundraising events (such as an upcoming trivia night) to aid in the cost of the trip.
Ms Haines says she volunteered to go to Nairobi because she wanted to “pay it forward”. “I wanted to go over to Nairobi to learn as much as I can about self-advocacy and then come back and teach guys within this organization who are less fortunate than us three to self-advocate for themselves.
“I want to help stop in-house bullying. I want to teach people that if you’re getting bullied in the workplace you can speak up and say, ‘Hey, these are my rights’. I want to get as much education as I can from the conference and learn what it’s like for someone overseas compared to here,” she said.
Similarly, Mr Maxwell is heading to Kenya to learn more about self-advocacy and how to incorporate it into his everyday life when he returns.
“In my school life I was bullied and humiliated because of my disability – but I think it’s time to set my goals straight and learn a bit more about advocacy and when I come back I want to promote it to my workplace so that everyone can join in.”
This isn’t the first time he has travelled overseas to learn about disability awareness. “I’ve been to South Africa before with Tara, and I want to travel to other places – not just Kenya, but also New Zealand and Scotland,” he said.
Ms Elliffe has also attended various overseas conferences with the support of FRANS.
“It [FRANS] helped me since I was 22, and I got more experience of going to conferences. I’ve been to Singapore, Dublin, Brisbane. We’ve made lots of friends overseas, but we have also made some of them in Sydney,” she said.
The group has been meeting every Friday afternoon to plan the organisation and fundraising ideas for the trip.
One fundraising effort that the group has prepared is a Trivia Night at Petersham Bowling Club on May 9 at 7pm.
The questions and evening’s proceedings will be run by the trio, with sections such as Sport, Movies, TV Shows and History knowledge featuring in the line-up.
