Advocacy

Like you have more opportunities to be re-inspired and to find ways in.

And when we talk about the idea of advocacy, it can feel really overwhelming.

And yet it's Advocacy is as simple as what you said, voting in your school board elections, like caring enough to put people in these positions in your backyard who care about the role, who care about the institution like that is a small thing.

And yet it is not a small thing at all.

Yeah.

I'm your host, Hallie Tecko.

And today we are talking about health care advocacy, how you take something that makes you angry about our health care system and turn that anger into action.

I have two guests today.

One is my friend Trina Sphere, co-founder and CEO of Figs, the publicly traded medical apparel company known not just for its super comfortable, stylish scrubs.

You run a public company.

You have a fiduciary duty to your shareholders.

Why invest your company's time and money into advocacy? What exactly are you trying to accomplish?

That's such a great question.

This submitted by Laura Yater of the Quad City Times.

The Support, Advocacy, and Learning Community Services will open its new Skip Alongs Rock Island Childhood Center and Welcoming Center campus next week.

The new campus will officially open on October 29th at 2101 11th Street in Rock Island.

The new 32,500 square foot 15.7 million dollar campus includes a new skip along childhood center with its 12 state-of-the-art classrooms and the capacity to serve 192 children.

We love Drupal.

This is episode 575, the Drupal Advocacy Program.

On today's show, we're talking about Drupal advocacy, non-code contribution, and the future with our guest, Tiffany Farriss.

We'll also cover better social sharing buttons as our module of the week.

Oh, that is a hard module to say quickly.

And we don't have a single privileged actor that is supporting us.

Obviously, Dries and Acquia have been huge supporters and a thread line, but they don't get any... advantage over any other firm like you see in other open source communities so we're not entirely individual driven like apache and we're not really corporate driven like eclipse or the linux foundation we just have always kind of followed our own path and I think that with the moment that we're in and how AI is disrupting both what it means to be a maintainer of open source software and what it means to be someone who works primarily in the agency space, I think that it's a good moment to look at how we might broaden that base of support that we've certainly enjoyed, right? I think it's a surprise to no one if I say that Drupal's largely gotten to where we are now because of web development, web design agencies of about 15 to 75 people.

And if we look at the contributions, if we look at who supports Drupal, either in terms of making modules or in terms of financial support for the infrastructure and DrupalCon itself, or in terms of of actually the advocacy that happens, it's disproportionately concentrated in that agency space.

And then it just started from there.

And the whole mission here is, one, community, and two, is just being able to raise money for an organization like the Ronald McDonald House and then later bring on the Butterfly House, which is here in Albemarle, to get those two organizations that is, one, a child advocacy organization, Advocacy.

Yes, there you go.

Center for Children.

She's an employment specialist.

She's also the founder of D. Reid Coaching, Consulting, and Advocacy.

and a contracted vocational rehabilitation provider for the Texas Workforce Commission.

Dr. Reed, welcome to Hello Houston.

And so what really works well in terms of disability mentoring is it opens up the hearts and minds of individuals who are professionals who maybe don't live with disabilities and don't have any idea what it's like to have to navigate a system in society that was not created for them.

It offers them the opportunity to share their perspective and their expertise in their area of focus while also learning from the individual who does live with a disability what it's actually like to have to navigate that and what reasonable accommodations can look like and how can you come alongside someone in their journey even if you can't directly relate to them and just again going back to the humanity piece just be fellow humans that are doing life together and learning from one another as it should be and so mentorship opens lots of opportunities not just for future employment but also builds networking skills which many of the folks that i serve have difficulty with because they don't usually have the opportunity for that professional level of socialization

Dr. Deshanna Reed is an employment specialist, founder of D. Reed Coaching, Consulting, and Advocacy, and a contracted vocational rehabilitation provider for the Texas Workforce Commission.

Disability Mentoring Day is Friday, October 23rd.

And they all work together.

Safety asks you to consider what helps you to feel safe enough to let go Privacy asks you to consider what allows you to stop feeling observed and turn your attention inwards Advocacy asks you to think about who will protect your space when you need somebody else to carry some of that responsibility conditions asks you to consider what you are asking your body to do within and environment brings us back to the wider context in which all of those things are happening asking you to consider not simply where you are but how you are experiencing where you are So when you think about your own birth environment, I would encourage you to look beyond whether you have chosen the right room, the right setting or the right physical surroundings and become curious about what that environment communicates to you.

Does it feel familiar enough for you to settle? Does it allow you to become absorbed in what your body is doing? Do you understand what is happening around you? Do you feel able to be yourself within that space rather than feeling that you need to behave in a particular way because you are being observed? And perhaps the most interesting question to take away from this episode is what does your environment tell your body? Because your environment is not simply the room you are standing in.

It is the context in which you are experiencing one of the most powerful physiological processes your body will ever undertake.