[NeuroBeautiful]

Hey Dez,

Over the last year I participated in the disability group at a local community center. It is a social club for people with developmental disabilities so it was pretty focused. Most people were on the autism spectrum. We did mostly social activties We also did other things like bake sales and fundraising and since we were the ages 18+ group, we volunteered at the holiday party for kids with special needs.

Something memorable was the annual self-advocacy conference that we went to. I feel like that's a good concept to incorporate somehow. I feel like a disability club would have a balance of education, support and socializing. Education would mean like building resources and information for those who want to learn more, those with family members who have a disability, how to support someone with a disability, how someone can cope with a new diagnosis and maybe like a list of organizations or something for those in need of resources for themselves. Support would be like sharing personal stories, listening to one another, and having peer to peer conversations that will also include those without disabilities. And socializing would be the fun part like chilling and stuff. These things can like overlap of course.
Disability can mean so many things-there's physical (chronic and short term), medical, psychiatric, developmental (including learning disabilities) and that's only one way to categorize it. But I do think that learning to become your own advocate is important for any disability type...
I would also say to have different ways a person can access information. Because disabilities can be so different, some people rely on audio, while others rely on subtitles, and some will learn much better with visuals.
I hope this makes sense :P Best of luck with this! I would be interested in hearing how things go over the year.