Inspire’s Achievement Day 2017: celebrating successes, history and a sense of community

The Inspire Foundation’s mission is to try to help everyone with a disability achieve equality and inclusion in society. We do this by providing individuals and their families with educational, therapeutic and leisure services.

Last month, Inspire celebrated Achievement Day 2017 – a day during which Inspire invites parents, guardians, clients, staff and volunteers to celebrate all the successes achieved by Inspire’s clients throughout the year.

“Success at Inspire is not always as straight forward to define,” explained Mr. Antonello Gauci – Inspire’s CEO. “For some it might be learning how to sit up straight, for others it might be improving their literacy and numeracy skills. For some it might be learning how to talk even if they’re already in middle school, and for others it might be learning how to eat solid food.”

“Whilst all successes are worth celebrating, achievement is not just about recognising talents and strengths, but also about reaching personalized areas of growth that are identified throughout the year. Success does not stop at reaching our goals and potential, it’s also about creating history together, about looking back and seeing how members of a community grew and changed in a way that gave space to each and every member’s personal growth,” added Mr. Gauci.

Inspire launched its first Achievement Day back in 2013. It started off as a small-scale event organised within one particular Educational Programmes, which, eventually, following its success and popular demand, Inspire extended the event to reach a larger number of service users within the organisation.

“Inspire aims at celebrating successes, no matter how small, on a daily basis. We do this by empowering and encouraging our service users and their families to strive towards their max- imum potential and cherishing each step forward along the way,” explains Charlene Borg – Parent Relations Manager at Inspire.

“But Achievement Day at Inspire is not only about celebrating successes. It’s about those annual rituals that connect family members and staff, it’s about seeing caregivers and siblings meeting with other caregivers and siblings and experiencing an environment that supports the progress of their children, brothers and sisters. It’s about the sense of belonging and strengthening of our community. It’s about recalling past events and realising how many milestones where overcome along the way,” Ms Borg added.