Finding the Upsides of 2021

By Sarah Paterson-Hamlin, UpsideDowns Education Trust

The best year of the century for the Down syndrome community has come to an end. Despite the challenges of COVID-19 (and an all-Tāmaki Makaurau workforce!), UpsideDowns has still had a fantastic 2021, taking on no fewer than 90 new families! We are thrilled to now be providing speech and language therapy funding for 288 children with Down syndrome spread across every region of the country. We estimate this to be around one third of the total number of whānau who need our services, so keep spreading the word! We were planning all kinds of things for this auspicious year – a gala dinner, collaboration with Attitude, and lots of fundraising events for our members and supporters to get involved with across the motu, but of course, COVID had other plans for us all. We did embrace the times however, and held our first-ever virtual fundraiser. Over 100 runners, walkers, and prampassengers collectively travelled from our HQ in Mt Albert, Auckland, up to Cape Reinga, down to Rakiura (Stewart Island), and back again. Along the way we had virtual greetings from members, celebrities, and friends. It was a lovely upside to lockdowns, and a new way to celebrate our work and our community with members outside of Auckland, something we’re always trying to do more of. 2021 was also the year we expanded our team from two to three, and welcomed Ella Pooley in the newly-created role of Fundraising and Digital Media Manager. Ella has excelled in the role so far, and helped fund hundreds of speech and language therapy sessions through her work in grants, regular giving, events, and social media.

“My favourite parts of the job are talking to families, especially when we can take them off the waitlist, and getting emails telling us we’ve been awarded grants!” Ella says. During the various lockdowns, Ella, Bea, and I (the UpsideDowns staff) have done our best to keep things ticking along as normal, despite a combined five children and nine flatmates to share spaces with! We’ve continued to engage in fun Makaton videos and have been so impressed at how families and therapists alike have picked up and run with teletherapy. Our hope is that this will have a long-lasting positive impact for those who live more remotely, or who otherwise find it challenging to attend in-person sessions. October in 2021 should have been a great celebration for the Down syndrome community, but of course it was deeply affected by the tragic death of Lena Zhang Harrap. We are so grateful to have been able to work alongside the NZDSA and ADSA during this extremely challenging time. As a new year begins, we’re looking forward to all the new possibilities it will bring from the experiences gained in 2021. Closer relationships with our partners, more options for therapy in all parts of Aotearoa, virtual as well as (hopefully) in-person events, and the good fortune to live in a place that so clearly values and protects its most vulnerable. And of course, the opportunity for me both personally and professionally to be your new editor of Chat 21! I hope these two roles will complement each other well, and I thank the NZDSA and the community for your trust in me. Sarah Paterson-Hamlin CEO (and dishwasher) UpsideDowns Education Trust

The UpsideDowns team and the All Black Barrett brothers at a special celebration event at Eden Park, August 2021 (prelockdown)