Announcing the 2025 Williamson Community Leadership Program Participants
15/11/2024
On International Day for Persons with Disabilitiy, we are pleased to share with you Leadership Victoria’s new ‘Inclusion Cup’, developed as a team effort by Amanda Lawrie-Jones (Access & Inclusion Consultant) and Dreamtime Art Creative Consultancy (DACC). It represents dignified access, and encourages us all to understand that accessibility is everyone’s responsibility. The Inclusion Cup comes with a message that separate is not equal, nor is it inclusive. People with disability often have a separate policy, a separate process and often a separate entrance – we need to come together through the same door and enjoy our hot beverage together. The Inclusion Cup is a call to action for all of us to lead courageously and make an act of inclusivity a daily ritual, just like our coffee, tea or other beverage.
Panelists Jacqui Watt, Alla Kolganova (WCLP '07) and Nevena Spirovska MAICD (LGBTQ+LP ‘20) receiving the inclusion Cups at the Women's Leadership Program 2024
The cup was designed by DACC Founders, Matthew Everitt (Taungurung man of the Kulin) and Fatima Everitt (Filipina immigrant), with input from Amanda Lawrie-Jones, who are all Alumni of Leadership Victoria’s Williamson Community Leadership Program. It features “NOTHING ABOUT US, WITHOUT US”: a common mantra in the disability community, and nuggets of societal contributions exemplifying leadership from people with disabilities within the images on the cup, such as Braille, the hearing-aid and other inventions and breakthroughs that have transformed accessibility for people with disabilities.
While it is not representative of every existing disability, the Inclusion Cup aims to convey a variety of ways that disability presents in our communities, and was designed to spark conversation, to educate, to highlight the contributions of people with disabilities, and to be a testament to centring and listening to underrepresented voices to create systemic change.
