Wow, what an incredible year we’ve had!

Our CPActive community has achieved so much and we wanted to take the time to appreciate everything we’ve done over the last twelve months:  

We launched the ‘Blaze the Trail’ campaign

Led entirely by our CPActive champions, we kicked off a campaign to improve pathways from school to work for people with CP and similar disabilities in NSW.

Since we launched the campaign, we’ve collected nearly 1,000 signatures for our petition and attracted the attention and support of policymakers in NSW.  

Then, we WON the campaign!

Joined by then-Shadow Minister for Disability Inclusion Kate Washington, then-NSW Labor leader Chris Minns and Dylan Alcott, our champions made headlines and celebrated a massive win – a commitment from NSW Labor to improve the pathways from education to employment and develop specific policies to make these pathways more accessible for people living with disability.

The Labor Party then went onto form the NSW Government. 

We look forward to making these policies into a reality next year with our now elected leaders!

We launched an Australian first – the Young Changemakers Program

Our pilot program for youth leadership in advocacy, Young Changemakers recently celebrated its first graduating cohort of young leaders!

This is the first of its kind in Australia, a youth development and leadership program delivered for young people with CP, BY people with CP!

Over the course of 6 months, our young leaders took the time to learn about the ins-and-outs of advocacy and we had some pretty special people involved in the program, including NDIA Chair Kurt Fearnley, human rights lawyer Rosemary Kayess, Paralympian Ben Tudhope and Minister for the NDIS, Bill Shorten.

We had Tech Talks – our first event hosted entirely by someone using eye-gaze technology!

We held an online event hosted by Riley Saban, disability entrepreneur and co-founder of PolySpine, using his eye-gaze technology to communicate with the audience. It was awesome to see the role tech can play to enable people with disability and it was a great opportunity to start thinking about how it could further enable us.

We hosted the World CP Day Awards

We held our online, international awards ceremony to celebrate our amazing community with host and friend of CPActive, Elly Desmarchelier. Our World CP Day Awards competition welcomed entries from all over the world for ideas about how to improve the lives of people with disability. The winner was Maria Dalmon from Australia for her app ‘Help Connect’! We look forward to the work Maria and Remarkable will do together to bring this life-changing tech to life.  

Our community came to together for a Lived experience lab

As the last event of the year, we came together as a community for a lived experience lab. We collaborated in a small-group forum to discuss our greatest challenges with technology and how we could improve it to be universally accessible. Stay tuned for more lived experience labs in the new year!

Our champions have been amazing this year – we also want to give them a special shoutout for all the work they’ve done. They’ve reached people far and wide, not just community members and politicians, but also some big name brands by the likes of Apple, Amazon

What a fabulous year. And we could not have done it without you and your support for CPActive – so thank you!

Our champions were busy making waves across Australia, including some highlights below. Don’t see yours listed? Tell us what you got up to at info@cpactive.org.au

• Maria shared her story about the role technology plays in her life – only to go onto WIN the World Cerebral Palsy Day competition with her groundbreaking idea
• Sophie and Declan got involved in the national Disability Housing Dialogue – to pave the way for better housing solutions for people with disability
• Tamsin and Tahlia were part of the ParaMatildas team that became champions of Asia at the IFCPF Asia Oceania Championships
• Almost a dozen champions joined Bill Shorten and disability sector leaders at the Sydney launch of the NDIS Review

Being a CPActive champion is for anyone with CP or a similar disability, regardless of age or background. If you’re interested in getting more involved in 2024, please email us on info@cpactive.com.au

We can’t wait to see what next year brings!

Our third and final ‘Youth Lab’ was held on 14^th September, where young people with cerebral palsy came together to help inform a pilot program that teaches young people with CP around Australia how to use networking to their advantage.

NextGen ambassador Meret Hassanen gave insights into how she was able get into the tough media industry through the power of networking.

“I was fortunate enough to do an internship with the ABC as part of my degree and I kept in touch with the manager I worked with… I emailed her and asked for feedback. She rang me one day out of the blue and said ‘I have a job going in my team, you should apply’ and that’s how I got my first job with the ABC and all the rest have taken a similar track,” Meret said.

Participants shared their excellent tips and tricks of the trade in finding and utilising your best networks.

“Networking equals having access to providers who work towards supporting your through achieving your goals. Goals in work, social and life circumstances,” explained Cassie.

For others, technology was listed as an important asset, like Eleanor who encouraged others to “use fear as a motivator!”

While Jack summed it up perfectly with “sometimes you’ve got to take a risk!”

Although this was our last Youth Lab, it is also just the beginning of something much bigger for CPActive including our pilot program which is being launched in 2023.

Our next event is on October 14 for the World Cerebral Palsy Day Awards. Absolutely everybody is welcome to come, keep an eye out in your inbox for the invitation.