Inclusion Europe’s director Milan Šveřepa reflects on our work done in 2020.
I don’t know about you but I don’t find project reporting particularly enjoyable. It doesn’t help when it is all about a year which itself was incredibly hard.
But there is one element to it which is quite gratifying: seeing all of the year’s work collected and summarised together. It gives you a perspective on everything that happened.
It is easy to forget all the work you have done: there is always something new and urgent demanding your attention.
Reporting forces you to take a moment, summarise and think about what good (and bad) happened.
As I was doing exactly that for our work, I’d like to share some of the achievements Inclusion Europe recorded in 2020.
I hope this may be useful to you too: With links to some of this you can check it out yourself. And perhaps it will make you think of what you value from last year’s work.
Here goes:
The European Parliament resolution on the rights of people with intellectual disabilities in the pandemic.
It was very important to see the European Parliament recognise the situation of people with intellectual disabilities and their families in such difficult times.
Hand in hand with this goes the Covid report Inclusion Europe published towards the end of the year. It took a lot of work to put it together – monitoring news from all over Europe, in all kinds of languages and contexts. Seeing it being appreciated by colleagues across different organisations was very nice. As was the fact it was shared by the Politico Brussels Playbook newsletter. I certainly enjoyed that 
Being recognised as having something to offer.
Inclusion Europe was invited to contribute to 22 events as speakers.
Self-advocates supported by Inclusion Europe spoke at the European Day of Persons with Disabilities, at the Towards Inclusion conference as well as at other events.
Growing reach of our communication and (social) media
134 articles published on our website (of that, 54 in easy-to-read).
Over 30 articles in the media about our work, in 7 different languages. The coverage was about our work on deinstitutionalisation, our Covid response, inclusive education, preventing violence against women with intellectual disabilities and other topics.
You continue to enjoy our social media content
- Facebook: 10,300 followers, + 830 from last year;
- Twitter: 10,651 followers, + 1,076;
- LinkedIn: 1,330 followers, + 530.
Informing our future work with reports and papers
New position paper on education will hopefully inform our work for some years to come.
We also produced papers on topics such as legal capacity and education, children’s rights, housing or poverty. All to inform our work on relevant EU policies and initiatives.
Growing engagement across Europe
71 self-advocates, professionals, and family members from 11 countries attended our online discussions about self-advocacy during the pandemic. The fact these discussion were held online was an advantage for once: we could organise them in 7 different language sessions, allowing the participation of many who would normally not be able to attend a physical meeting held in English.
2 new members joined Inclusion Europe: from England and from Ukraine.
I am leaving out many other activities and products: easy to understand videos, campaign promoting quality education for all, inclusive employment guidelines, easy-to-read newsletter in 7 languages…
I just wanted to share some of the work from last year which, in retrospect, makes me happy.
A big thank you to my colleagues who made all this happen.
To Inclusion Europe members who always contribute to our work.
To every organisation and person who we had the pleasure to work with in 2020.
And to the European Commission, which not only made this possible with their funding – but also forced me (via the grant reporting requirements to take this step back.
