Community Engagement
LET’S supports, plans and/or facilitates community engagement sessions and creates a space where people with disabilities and neurodivergent folks can share their experiences and perspectives for the betterment of services and/or organizations/businesses. LET’S facilitates space for people to share their truths, frustrations, and hopes. We ensure that the engagement is not a box to check but rather a valuable use of time for all involved.
Disabled and neurodivergent folks are often asked to share their personal stories. Knowing improvements won’t be made without their voices and experiences, they open their lives to strangers. They share traumas, discrimination, and emotional stores. Unfortunately, all too often, their truth and vulnerability is not valued, utilized, or responded to.
LET’S does not ask for participation from community members unless the community engagement is part of a process of change. We know what it’s like to share difficult parts of our lives only to learn there were pre-determined results or that our words were documented then put on a shelf or in a drawer, never to be used.
It is vital that people with lived expertise be monetarily recognize. However, valuing people’s time, energy, and stories must also include recognizing the costs of this sharing and how it effects the people most impacted. It is important that this offering is met with appreciation, communication, self and organizational reflection, and, most importantly, follow-through.