I am a deeply sensory person who cares about love and ethics. Hufflepuff to the core. The redwoods were my first home and my heart will live there forever. I live in the sensory world, I am only a visitor to ideas and words. Oh, and my alignment? Chaotic-good.
Interviews with self-advocates. There is captioning on the Youtube videos, transcript below.
My name is Johanna Wortman and I’m from St. Charles, Missouri. And I’m vice president of my chapter, and I’ve been president the last several years of my chapter off and on. I’ve been involved in several other… well, just to tell you about myself, I am involved in other things outside of People First. I volunteer at the St. Louis Zoo, I attend Harvester Christian Church, I’m in the choir, I sing alto. And I’m also a member of the St. Charles Lions Club. And I now am — I signed up to be a member of SABE, so I’m a member of SABE. And I’m pretty active in my community and I have a job where I am my own boss, and I have several candy machines throughout my area in St. Charles, and I go shopping for an elderly lady in the community once a week, and I share grocery shopping with another customer/friend of mine on Tuesdays it’s an [ITA?] run, and I’m just real involved in my community and my area and I have lots of friends that I do things with.
“You are really involved. Can you tell us why you think it’s so important for self-advocates to be involved in their community?”
To make people aware of people with disabilities, and let them know that we are people too, and and to be able to fit in, in the community. I just have so many great friends out in the community, they treat me like they want to be treated and. I’m also involved in the regular church bible study class that I’ve — it’s the first time I was asked to join church bible study class ever, so it’s kind of a neat thing - me and my staff are going, attending every Tuesday. It feels good to be in with normal — the normal population, and meeting other people in the area that live around you, doing things.
“Can you tell me a little bit more about your job where you do the vending machines, and how you got involved in that?”
My living situation — my company that supports me all of the way, used to have a company called “At Your Service”, and they started — where people had all kinds of their own business; some people had wheelchairs to go, and others had did recycling of aluminum cans, some did crafts, and one of our biggest things was we made our own laundry detergent and perfumes, and bars of soap, and candles and stuff and that was going pretty well. And I had my hand in that too — I had a shampoo that was for sale in our store — we had a store that we had everything that was for sale that everybody made and stuff in the At Your Service. I also had a soda machine at the ? way office, and I had a couple of snack boxes that were on the honor system, one at the DDRB office and one at another agency in the St. Louis area, and two candy machines out in the community.
“Wow, well Johanna, thank you so much for sharing your busy, busy schedule with us.. it’s amazing all the stuff that you’re involved in.”
Yeah but now we don’t have At Your Service no more — they cut the company out of [world’s way?] they have another company called Community Integration. But some of us that had successful businesses when At Your Service was still up ad running, they allowed us, once a week, to do our businesses, so we still are flourishing, some of us, in our business accounts.
“Excellent. That’s great. Is there anything else you’d like to tell us about?”
I enjoyed this conference, I think I’m learning a lot, and I had a goal for myself that I set while I was coming to the conference, I was going to meet three people from three different areas and make contact with them, and switch/exchange address and phone numbers and emails and keep in touch with them. I’ve done — I’ve succeeded in doing that so I met my goal. So — and I volunteered at here while I was at the conference a couple times and helped with the dance. I’ve just been having a great old time and seeing old friends from other states that I know ad all over Missouri so it’s a good learning experience, getting together. I would recommend it for anybody to come again.
Theme
4:23am
May 27, 2014
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