Milan Šveřepa writes about his impressions from the World Congress of Inclusion International.
Last week at Inclusion International World Congress was about meeting people from around the world and learning from all the great work being done for full rights and inclusion.
It’s always great to come together, to discuss about our work – to recharge our Inclusion batteries with new, shared energy.
We’ll need it.
Because if there’s one take away for me, it’s this – We need to roll up our sleeves, and dig in our heels.
There are many governments in Europe (and in other places too) making lives of people with intellectual disabilities and their families harder.
- Cutting money for support.
- Allowing worse quality of services.
- Bringing back institutions.
It’s not something I just learned there at Inclusion Europe session with European organisations. This has been going on for some time (I often bring it up in my posts or videos).
But hearing it within 15 minutes from literally everyone in the room is another matter.
There were colleagues from Armenia 🇦🇲 Bulgaria 🇧🇬 Denmark 🇩🇰 Finland 🇫🇮 Germany 🇩🇪 Hungary 🇭🇺 Ireland 🇮🇪 Norway 🇳🇴 Romania 🇷🇴 Spain 🇪🇸 Sweden 🇸🇪 United Kingdom 🇬🇧 Moldova 🇲🇩 at the conference.
Plus the knowledge from our team about Portugal 🇵🇹 Netherlands 🇳🇱 France 🇫🇷 Belgium 🇧🇪 Czechia 🇨🇿.
The picture was quite clear.
I’m glad for this experience.
Not happy this is being done to people with intellectual disabilities and their families, but glad we could be there together to see it and talk about what we need do about it.
This movement brings together some of the strongest and most resilient people.
We won’t accept backsliding.
We’ll roll up our sleeves to put up a fight.
We’ll dig in our heels to stand agains the backward policies so many are trying to normalise.
Together for full rights and inclusion!
