The wait is over! So get ready... AND WE'RE OFF!
CYA are excited to announce that we're currently getting ready to start work on TWO - YES... 2!!! NEW campaign projects this year.
At the beginning of the month (February) some of the CYA team spent the day with Tahmid who kindly travelled from London to work with us for the day.
Tahmid works for an international organisation called Peace First.
Peace First is an international non-profit organisation that works with young people around the world to become powerful "peacemakers"
With the guidance of Tahmid the team were able to share and discuss topics we felt passionate about and wanted to change. Working with Tahmid, the team came up with two main issues we wanted to explore which we were then able to turn into our two new campaigns.
Our two new campaigns are:
Increasing Visibility campaign
The aim of this campaign is to increase the visibility of people with a range of additional needs within the media. Our mission is to create and increase representation of people with additional needs in the media and spread positivity and challenge public perceptions of people with additional needs and disabilities and what they can achieve.
Challenging Facebook on how it deals with discrimination towards disabled users "Action Against Facebook"
The aim of this campaign is to challenge the way users are able to report discrimination targeted at those that have additional needs and disabilities. We want this issue to be taken more seriously - we want to challenge the fact that currently within Facebook's reporting menu there is no option relating to disability hate speech or discrimination which means that at the moment the only available category to choose is "Other" which we believe is unfair and makes this type of discrimination look acceptable or less of an issue compared to other types of discrimination. CYA believes that all types of discrimination should be tackled equally to one another.
Our time with Tahmid enabled us to create clear plans and strategy ideas to move forward with our ideas. We shared our plans with the whole CYA team and there is a lot of excitement so prepare yourselves it's only a matter of time until another crazy idea comes to life...
Oh... actually, whilst we're on the subject of crazy ideas... We would love to borrow a lorry to take our CYA sofa on tour to London... So if you do have a lorry lying around somewhere that you may have forgotten about, do have a look round for it and get in touch with us!
Finally, on behalf of the whole CYA team I'd like to send a big thank you to Tahmid - we all enjoyed working with you and found the whole session very meaningful and the resources shared with us have been a great help to get actions into place.
Written by Joey on behalf of the CYA team
Pictured: Some of the CYA team (Joey, Amanda, Molly, Nathan, Umar and Joanna) joined by Mel and Tahmid
About Peace First:
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Cya soon!