My name is Bridget Doyle and I am a casual employee with lived experience of disability for the Summer Foundation and have been working with them for 2 years on different projects. I love going out for coffee, growing my own fruits and vegetables and binge watching tv.
I was a part of a focus group made up of lived experience contributors. The focus group aimed to come up with a better way for the Summer Foundation to stay connected and keep their contributors up to date. The newsletter will share details of projects that people with lived experience can be part of.
We came together over Zoom for a couple of workshops to understand what wasn’t working and put together ideas of what could work better. It was a very collaborative process and the Summer Foundation was very open to everyone’s ideas and contributions.
After we came down to the final few concepts, we settled on a newsletter as the best way to keep all existing contributors up to date, and hopefully bring in new ones. Then staff at the Summer Foundation went away and developed a mock newsletter, sent it out to the focus group contributors and asked for our feedback on the name and layout.
I love being a part of the Summer Foundation family and what they stand for; being part of the different projects and striving to make things better for people who come after me. Knowing I can contribute to something that is bigger than myself and that my ideas and contributions have helped in the projects definitely brings a sense of pride and accomplishment.