WECIL AGM a Success
Thursday October 15 2009
WECIL holds another successful AGM
On September 10th WECIL held its Annual General Meeting here at the Vassall Centre in Bristol. I chaired the meeting and was delighted to be able to welcome everyone to our showcase event of the year.
We focused, this year, on the perennial problem of hate crime against Disabled people. This is something we are helping to reduce through the work of our Disablist Incidents and Crime Education Project (DICE) which aims to help Disabled people to feel safe and more confident. We listened to an interesting talk by Jill MacNamara, a local barrister from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), on the subject of hate crime, particularly Disablist hate crime, and we were encouraged to hear that the CPS takes this matter very seriously.
Continuing this theme, it was also really good to see the DVD, ‘In Our Own Words’, which had been made by our Listening Partnership (LP) of young Disabled people in Bristol on the subject of bullying and harassment. This was presented by one of WECIL’s younger members, Hannah, who was able to give those present some idea of what it felt like to be on the receiving end of this type of behaviour. A number of LP members appeared in the production and we were able to admire their acting skills as they put across the ways in which they had been bullied and harassed because they were Disabled.
We have spent some time completely revamping our website and had this on display throughout the afternoon. This features our new Forum, enabling members to post comments and join discussions on different topics. Being able to get mutual support like this will be one way of getting the very necessary peer support that our service users want.
So, as you can see, there was a lot going on and I was delighted to be able to welcome a good number of members and our own staff to the meeting. However, it was disappointing that, with a couple of notable exceptions, many of our link officers were conspicuous by their absence.
Inevitably, link officers only see what is happening with their own particular project or service. The AGM would have been just the opportunity to see what WECIL is doing on a number of different fronts. As some were unable to come I sent them a copy of our Annual Report which, for those who have read it, I’m sure you will agree is a very informative and readable document.
I ended up by giving them the date for next year’s AGM which is booked for 16th September at 2.00pm. I hope you will put this in your diaries too.
Neil Shipman
Director
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