Spokeout
July 2025

Marie, Megan and Garreth, continue to work hard behind the scenes to bring you this bumper edition full of interesting articles. We hope you’ll agree!

Before we get into what’s coming up, I wanted to congratulate our courageous athletes who took part in the Fitness Inclusion Games, last Friday. The atmosphere in Sport Ireland’s Indoor Arena was electric as 120 IWA members took to the track to compete.  I urge you to check out our highlights video of the day here.

In other good news, we are excited to share a meaningful development in our ongoing partnership with FREENOW, as part of our work to improve accessible transport options for our members. FREENOW has shared a dedicated National Phone Booking line, 1800 303 030,  to help streamline access to their services. While this line isn’t exclusive to the accessible fleet, it can be used to book accessible taxi.

Looking ahead to this edition, our Spotlight features Emma Ward, a powerful disability activist who shares the origins of her passion for activism and advocacy. Also on the advocacy front, Joan Carthy shares her experience of speaking at the United Nations about the power of representation, partnership, and inclusive technology.  If you are looking for an opportunity to get more involved in advocacy work please consider applying for a role on our Board. More details including how to apply are included in this edition.

On the sport front, we hear from IWA-Sport athlete, Mohamed Camara on his journey from Sierra Leone to Ireland as he gets ready to showcase his determination and competitive spirit ahead of representing Ireland at the 2025 Para Powerlifting Invitational, this weekend in Dublin.

If you have a bit more time on your hands now the summer is here, look no further than our piece on a fun day out at the upcoming AbleFest and if you’re looking for independence in the kitchen we bring you a world of clever, quirky gadgets that can boost your confidence when it comes to making tasty meals.

We are six months into this newly formatted version and we truly hope you are enjoying reading it. Our statistics tell us you are but we prefer to speak to real people so please do pop us a message on the feedback form at the end page of this edition or email us at news@iwa.ie

This is your newsletter and we are listening.

Many thanks,

Pam

PS: If you attend AbleFest or do some cooking please share your photos with us.