Ben Aldridge – Kalgoorlie Miner
Kalgoorlie-Boulder people living with disabilities set to be empowered to lead.
Regional people living with disabilities and with a passion for leadership will have the opportunity to be empowered by a new online workshop this month.
Presented by Ben Aldridge, a disability advocate and founder of 30 Foot Drop, the program will focus on empowered leadership for people living with a disability, with Kalgoorlie-Boulder having its own online group.
Mr Aldridge has his own unique experience to share after he was left a quadriplegic after an “alcohol-assisted gravity accident” — he fell 10 metres (30 feet) off a cliff — at the age of 22 and has since built a business around trying to dispel societal ignorance around disability.
He said he was often not taken seriously as a business owner because people made assumptions when they saw his wheelchair.
This is something he is hoping to help others overcome.
“The aim of the course is to unlock people’s leadership potential, and start them along that journey towards being able to advocate for themselves or for others, or to help make a change they want to see in the community,” he said.
“In order to create the change to actually make society more inclusive, we need to have more people with disabilities in leadership roles.
“These things can be really hard if you don’t have the skills to be able to put what changes you want to make into a language that people in those positions understand.”
The free workshop is set to begin on May 2 and finish up on May 13, with registrations available on the 30 Foot Drop website.
Mr Aldridge said it was important to reach regional people with these workshops because of the often metro-centric nature of WA.
“Travelling with a disability is hard. It is really hard, especially once you get into complex disabilities and it becomes almost impossible,” he said.
“Bringing it out to regions, where there’s an even large divide in this disability leadership happening, it’s really important to me.”
Mr Aldridge told the Kalgoorlie Miner he and his team work one-on-one with those taking part in the workshops to accommodate varying accessibility needs.