For Jasmine Edson, a Riverland resident who identifies as a young person with a disability, advocating for needs has usually been a solo affair.
She attended a workshop hosted in Berri to learn about what support networks she could access, and how to harness social media.
Jasmine moved to the Riverland a year ago and has been working to change the perception of her disability in the community by working on herself.
With the advent of social media, Jasmine noticed people in the community were familiar with the name but not the reality of her disability, Tourette's Syndrome.
"It isn't necessarily about misinformation as a whole, there's just a lot of people being uneducated accidentally. There's not enough real information coming out about it," she said.
"Through social media and influencers having Tourette's ... people know the name, people have heard of it but no one really knows what it is unless they are exposed to it."
Peer support
A workshop held through Enabled Youth Disability Network (EDYN) gave Jasmine an opportunity to look at which networks were available to her, a closer examination of what "advocacy" meant and how to use social media to share lived experiences.
"The workshops we held today were all around young people and about advocacy and about disability advocacy, learning about what advocacy actually is, the different types, and how [young people] can use the different types in their everyday lives," workshop leader and facilitator Sarah Footner said.
The stimulus for the workshops came from questions that Sarah had growing up that were unanswered in her own youth.
"How would I manage at university? How am I going to find a house? How am I going to drive a car? And there was no one to answer a lot of that for me," Sarah said.
For Sarah, advocacy wasn't a distant part of her life, she had to keep it in the back of her mind at all times.
"Always be prepared that something is going to go wrong, or I'm not going to get something that I need, and being ready to be proactive and jumping in and getting what I want for my life and what I want to achieve," she said.
Jasmine said after the workshop she had more awareness that advocacy did not need to be done alone.
"If anything is going to change, [it is] being open to bringing in other people, I feel like that is something that has always been a struggle for me," she said.
"Advocacy for me has always been working on myself so I can help others and change the perception of my disability."
