AFDO eNews – Issue 3

From our CEO, Ross Joyce

Ross's photo Welcome to the third edition of AFDO eNews.

I am very happy to announce that AFDO will again be attending the Conference of States Parties (COSP) to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) this year.

The annual conference brings together countries that have ratified the CRPD and representatives from Disability Peak Organisations (DPOs) and civil society organisations to discuss implementation of the CRPD and related international development issues.

AFDO President, Liz Reid and AFDO Vice President, Trevor Carroll will be representing AFDO at this year’s conference which is being held from 12th to 14th June 2018. If you would like to read more about the Conference of State Parties, please visit their website via this link.

We recently launched the Disability Australia Hub website which provides the community with a gateway to access high quality, up-to-date, disability specific information informed by people with disability and their families.

The ‘Hub’ website currently links to all our member organisations, and is available for all organisations/community groups advocating for people with disability to join for free. The Hub will be the go-to destination for information about disability and inclusion generally and will make it easy for people to connect to disability organisations in Australia. If your organisation/group is interested in joining the Disability Australia Hub website, please visit the Disability Australia Hub website.

I hope you enjoy this edition of AFDO eNews.

Speech by Trevor Carroll,
Disability Justice Advocacy

We are happy to release the second video from our Information Forum which was held in October last year. The video of one of our members, Disability Justice Advocacy (DJA) CEO, Trevor Carroll who spoke about the work of DJA. This video includes Auslan and captioning, and can be viewed on YouTube.

We will be holding another Information Forum this year on Monday 22nd October, so don’t forget to save the date! We look forward to seeing you there.

Disability Justice Advocacy Chief Executive Officer, Trevor Carroll speaking to the audience at the 2017 AFDO Information Forum. There is an Auslan interpreter beside him, and people with disability in the audience in the foreground.

Introducing our new staff member

We would like to introduce Ramona Mandy who commenced working at AFDO in the role of Project Officer, NDIS & Special Projects in March. Ramona brings with her a strong background in delivering training to people with disability, as well as sales and marketing experience. Ramona has a long history of working with people with disability, including working as a braille instructor at the Royal Victorian Institute for the Blind (RVIB).

In 2001, Ramona became the national sales representative at an international organisation which develops and provides assistive technology for people with disability. Her work involved promotion, sales, training and technical problem-solving. She has provided product demonstrations and associated tuition to employers, government departments, universities, schools, blindness agencies and blind and vision impaired individuals throughout Australia.

In her new role at AFDO, Ramona will be delivering the workshops about the NDIS and the ILC to people with disability, their families and carers, and to community organisations.

NDIS workshops

Thanks to funding from the Victorian Government through the Transition Support Package (TSP) fund, we will be running new NDIS workshops around Victoria throughout this year and next year for people with disability and their families.

We are also running workshops specifically for small, user-led community organisations. These NDIS workshops are about the Information, Linkages and Capacity Building (ILC) part of the NDIS.

To find out more about our upcoming NDIS workshops for people with disability and their families, or our upcoming ILC workshops for small, user-led community organisations, please visit the ‘events’ page on our NDIS website – Disability Loop.

AFDO and Disability Loop logos

Media Releases

Below is a list of media releases from this year. All of our media releases are available on the AFDO website. We also have copies of our recent policy submissions available on our website.

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