When you browse the message boards, you find all kinds. Do you ever wonder how they got started? Do you ever wonder about their story? Here is one particularly heartwarming story.
http://sunshine35446.yuku.com/directorySunshine started in 2001 and just celebrated its 8th birthday.
The online support group friends international was created in 2001 by two women that met in cyberspace summer 2000 at another ezboard. It was a joint effort between an American and myself in Norway. The American co-founder said:
- Mosken and I have a dream, to have this little town in cyberspace, for all who are in need. That they can come and feel the comfort of having people around that understand our huge obstacles.
That was our main vision in 2001 and it still is. Common discussion topics on the board include medical information, coping strategies and personal experience related to chronic pain and similar illness and individual support for people in their daily struggle.
Many of the members suffer from reduced ability to sit because of chronic pain. After some years several of us became advocates for equal rights for people living with sitting problems. We already had unofficial term for this kind of disability in Norway, although it was not really recognized until 2008. However, one of our American moderators in San Francisco came up with at English term: sitting disability! We wrote an article about this in Wikipedia and today sitting disability is a term used all over the Internet and is slowly getting recognized in both Europe and America.
In 2007 we began working with the prospect of registering the support group as a volunteer organization. The constituating meeting with approval of the articles was held in spring 2008. A few weeks later the organization was officially registered. This fact opened for new possibilities. We began looking into new ways of being advocates for people suffering from sitting disability and at the same time making our organization known to the public.
We decided to do something that has never been done before: creating a brochure about sitting disability in Norway. These days we are finishing a 10 page application to apply for funding from a Norwegian organization that each year donate money to volunteer organizations. A group of four members from the board have been working on this since the beginning of 2009.
If we are so lucky to be accepted for the funding, we will create the brochure in the beginning of 2010. We'll be working together with a professional designer and a company that will print and distribute the brochures to several thousand recipients in Norway. In the meantime we will be working on a website that is meant to inform about sitting disability and introduce people to our online support group.
The brochure will inform about sitting disability, equality, accessibility and human rights for people with any kind of disability, including people with sitting problems. The purpose is to raise the awareness for both the people that suffers from this disability and Society.
Society has gradually become used to people in wheelchairs and people with reduced mobility in general. There has been a progress in both awareness, accessibility and legislation for people with mobility problems.
It is now time to draw the attention to one of the most notable disabilities for people with chronic pain problems: the reduced ability to sit. A person with a sitting disability caused by excessive pain, is unable to sit or stand for long periods of time, and will thus have a need to lie down. The specific problems for persons with sitting disability are usually not addressed anywhere in research, legal documents, accessibility or anti-discrimination laws.
We hope that our advocate work and the brochure project will be steps towards changing the situation for people with sitting disability towards a better life and increased participation in society!
Mosken
http://sunshine35446.yuku.com/directoryIf you have a story to tell about your own yuku community, please contact me.
