James: I can CYA lot to look forward to
Hi, my name is James.
CYA creative campaigning is a great way for me to combine my creative skills, my lived experience and my passion for disabled people's right to a good life.
Being part of Coventry Youth Activists has given me the opportunity to both highlight my existing skills, but also build on my skills in areas like blog writing, and creating content for our website.
I find it helpful to have a clear role within the group, whilst also to be able to try out different aspects of CYA’s campaigning work. In our regular meetings I hold the role of ‘park it monitor’, this means I note any points made in our meetings that are not on our agenda for us to cover at the end of the session. This allows us to keep on track whilst still giving everyone an opportunity to bring up items outside of the regular agenda.
I also really enjoy the way that being part of CYA allows me to connect with others. Both with the CYA group itself which is such a great community of friends, and with the external allies and relationships that CYA holds such as Facebook, Ofcom and Coventry City Council.
In terms of my future work with CYA I am looking forward to:
New recruits joining CYA - bringing in new skills, ideas and points of view, and being able to share the skills and learning of the current CYA members with new people.
Continuing to see our relationships grow, and seeing more allies join our campaign.
My dream for CYA:
Continue to build on our relationship with Facebook as I am particularly interested in Facebook taking stronger action on disability hate and trolling.
My dream CYA ally would be Crystal Palace. I am a big fan of the team and I think they would make a great ally because sports teams like Crystal Palace have a large following on Facebook and it would be great to see them show their support for ending online disability hate.
What I would you say to someone who is thinking about joining CYA:
We have an exciting year ahead so it’s a great time to get involved.
Signing up to our newsletter is a great way to keep updated on our campaigning
Following @covactivists on socials and sharing CYA’s posts is also a great way to find out more and be part of CYA’s campaigning.
