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Showing posts from March, 2015

I'm Not Here For Your Entertainment

‘How would you do that?’ I asked the job candidate. She’d applied for a job in the disability sector, and I was interviewing – one of the questions related to the ‘how’ of making systemic change in the sector. ‘I would find people and get them to tell their stories,’ she said earnestly, and I made a mental note – she was the third in as many interviews who had spoken about the importance of using people’s stories to create systemic change. She’s not the only one. Bolstered by the success of Twenty Years: Twenty Stories, former Disability Discrimination Commissioner Graeme Innes has long been a proponent of the use of the stories of people with disability to transform the system. We all know it works – telling a personal story adds that extra, authentic, undeniably effective element. The BSWAT decision, the result of a concerted wage justice campaign, would not have been made if Messrs Nojin and Prior had not been prepared to tell their stories about being paid $1.85 an hour. D