Click on a word which is in bold to read what it means.
The “Europe in Action” conference happened from 5-7 June.
For the conference, we went to Vilnius.
Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania.
We organised the conference together with one of our members.
They are called Viltis.
The conference was about inclusion.
We talked about how we can make inclusion happen
everywhere.
We also talked about independent living.
At the conference, we asked self-advocates
what independent living means to them.
This is what they said:
- “To go wherever I want and to do whatever I want,
without anyone telling me what to do” - “To decide where I can live, who I want to live with,
how I spend my free time” - “To be able to meet new people”
There are two things that are important
to support people with living independently:
- How can we support them when they move from an institution
to the community? - How can we support them when they live in the community?
For example, with
Elisabeta Moldovan and other speakers
- Self-advocate Elisabeta Moldovan
Elisabeta managed to leave the institution she was living in.
She had lived in institutions for a very long time.
She also wrote a book about her experiences.
- Jonas Ruškus
He is a member of the UN CRPD committee.
- Marco Migliosi from the European Commission
They talked about different topics.
For example:
- what the UN CRPD says about independent living
- how families can support people with intellectual disabilities
to live independently - what the situation is like in countries like
Austria, Lithuania or Japan
We also went to meet people who live in Vilnius.
We went to two different places in Vilnius.
At one place, there were people with intellectual disabilities
who served coffee to the people who came by.
In this way, they could talk to each other.
At the end of the conference, José Smits from Inclusion Europe
gave a summary.
She said:
“What we must do is to change society.
We cannot change everything now.
But we can do some things now, and other things later.
Can you think of one thing you would like to do right now?”
Robert Martin is a member of the UN CRPD committee.
He left a video message for the conference.
You can watch it here:
Thank you to Senada Halilčević, and welcome to László Bercse!
At the conference, we also had the General meeting of EPSA.
At the meeting, Senada Halilčević left EPSA.
Senada had been the chair of EPSA for many years.
The new chair of EPSA is László Bercse from Hungary.
Thank you Senada for your great work, and welcome to László!
László is now also the vice-president of Inclusion Europe.
Oswald Föllerer from Austria became a new member of the
EPSA steering group.
There is also a new board member:
Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir from Iceland
Helene Holand from Norway left the board.
You can only be a board member for 12 years.
Helene Holand had been a board member for 12 years.
Inclusion Europe also got new members:
- the GADIR self-advocacy group of our Spanish member
Plena Inclusión - the French “Association les jeunes handicapés”
This means “Association of young people with a disability”.
You can find all photos of Europe in Action on Facebook.
You can read all posts with the conference hashtag #EiA19 on Facebook and Twitter.
Next conferences
Our next conferences will be:
- “Hear our Voices” self-advocacy conference in Graz, Austria.It will happen from 18-20 September.Sign up now!
- Europe in Action conference in Vienna, Austria.
It will happen from 27-29 May 2020.
We will talk about inclusive education.
