In September 2023 we’re starting a series of online events on the first Saturday of every month. The events are for autistic people (adults and older teenagers), both speaking and nonspeaking. Occasionally non-autistic people will also be invited.
What to expect
Every event has two parts: first Work, then Play.
The Work session may be a talk or a strategy meeting (hence the name Straturdays), while the Play is typically a hobby-based activity, such as a show-‘n-tell (we’ll explain this later). We don’t do ‘therapy’ and we don’t have non-autistic people leading anything.
The participation options will be clearly explained in the invitation mail so that you can decide what you’d like to do. You can attend both sessions or only one of the two. You will never be required to put on your camera or to answer questions in the Play session. In other words, lurking is OK if you prefer that.
The focus of the Work sessions
Work sessions address our current focus areas, which include:
- Activist training based on the CRPD
- Autistic health
- The rights and priorities of nonspeakers
- The #BanABA campaign
- The Autism in Africa campaign
- Creating friendship groups and individualised support groups
Some events have a local or regional focus, and some are open to participants from other countries.
The first event
The first event will take place on Saturday 2 September 2023.
The Work session starts at 14:00 SAST and ends at 15:30. We will devote some time to exploring certain features of Google Meet which we’ll need in future meetings. The rest of the meeting will be an explanation of the activities and focus areas of the Autistic Strategies Network, with an opportunity for questions, so that you can decide whether you’d like to get involved. We will record the rules for future meetings as we go along.
The Play session starts at 16:00 and end at 17:00. Anyone can create their own online meeting and post a link in the chat if they’d like to invite others to join them afterwards.
The duration and time of further events may change later.
How to prepare
- Practice using Google Meet if you haven’t used it before.
- Sign up for our mailing list so that we can send you an invitation at the end of August. We don’t send mail often, so you won’t get a lot of inbox clutter.