Wow, what a week!

Life is always interesting and more so when you tend to speak up for yourself and those you identify with and this week I’ve learnt that it a big way. Sometimes, even though it feels sometimes you’re talking to yourself, people are in fact listening.

On Monday I received word that after years of asking Climbing NZ will host some paraclimbing at the Lead Championships in Auckland on the 19th and 20th of August. Woo hoo! Then I realise that is only a few weeks away, my heart sank as I realised that I would be incredibly hard pressed to save enough to actually get to the event.

I put a quick post on Facebook about how exciting it was to have this opportunity, but I was disappointed that I may not be able to attend. This was shortly followed by some messages from one of my followers that would be prepared to sponsor me to attend the event. I am still absolutely blown away and hugely grateful that someone would do this for me.

Over the week we’ve been looking at who maybe able to attend and format.  At this stage we are looking at a multi-category “demonstration” event.  The format will be similar to the rest of the competitions with 2 qualification rounds (Saturday), with a finals round including isolation on the Sunday. It just so happens that the 3 or 4 of us that are interested are all lower limb neuro type disabilities. To be able to have this event is both exciting and terrifying! My passion really lies in climbing on real rock but this is such an awesome opportunity to spread awareness of adaptive climbing its time to get training and give the “competition a good crack”

For years I’ve felt like although I’ve been following my dream, at times it’s felt like my dream to see more inclusion in Outdoor Recreation and “adventure” sports is an impossible dream. At times I’ve been close to throwing in the towel and trying a more “normal” life for someone with limitations such as my own. Having someone support me in such a way gives me the confidence to keep pushing towards opening minds on adaptive recreation.

If you are at all interested in the paraclimbing event please get in touch at antnzventures@gmail.com and I can make sure that you know where things are at!

 

Climbing at Pakeo, Feb 2016

Wedensday saw an Enabling Good Lives Disabled Person’s and Families public forum. The focus of this meeting was to look how the Regional Leadership team should be formed. We split into groups (Disabled person’s and Families) and discussed the relationship between the EGL Principles and how we can use those as a lens in how the leadership team is formed around those principles from our perspectives. We then drew back together as a large group to speak about what we come up with.  Both groups will be holding individual meetings prior to the next public forum to increase engagement of the process prior to selection of the Regional Leadership team.

 

I am prepared to put my name forward for the Regional Leadership Group.  There has to be a better way than the system we see now; which includes miles of red tape that is hard to navigate, often ridiculous criteria to be met, and working with different agencies that don’t communicate with each other.  This often leads to further isolation of individuals and whanau, and a patchwork of “treatments or plans (etc)” instead of single cohesive plan to maximize participation in all sectors of a person’s life.  I’m upfront and honest that although I am prepared to get involved and help, I remain skeptical. I’m wary of any “system transformation” that the government announces, we’ve all seen the government announce that they have a “new system that will improve services” across many sectors and often that results in a even more bureaucratic system that is even less user friendly that the system before. Although I hope otherwise (and time will tell) I am still somewhat skeptical of the “Co-design” process because on paper it looks good, and the “right things” are being done with trying to engage the local community; well again, how often has government looked at community consultation and completely disregarded what the community has been asking for! I’m prepared to give it a good go and trying to make the world a little easier, and hope that the government actually puts this into good, efficient and user friendly services.

It’s been a bit of a full on week with all this going on, but it’s been a really positive week with a lot of positive things happening on a couple of fronts!

Feel free to comment below, share and email if you have any questions! Take care and stay safe everyone!
Antnz