Horley’s Teen Activist Fights For Funding & Awareness With Blog
Horley’s Teen Activist Fights For Funding & Awareness With Blog
A teenage activist and blogger from Horley has taken her and her family’s fight for education funding for her disabled sister online with a blog which has received thousands of visits. The powerful and profound blog documents the family’s struggle to secure council funding and
sheds light on the reality of being a young carer in the 21st Century, particularly those who are the siblings of young people with a disability.
Determined to make her voice heard, Lauren Myall, 18, from Horley, who is currently on a gap year whilst working at Waitrose & Partners started a blog a little more than two years-ago to highlight her family’s struggle for council funding and to raise awareness of what it means to be a young carer.
Lauren took to online activism to make a stand for her older sister aged 20, who for legal reasons is known as Daisy in the blog. The blog’s name, My Little Big Sis was inspired as, although Daisy is two years older, she shorter and younger in appearance, to Lauren, Daisy is literally her little, big sister.
Blogger Lauren says: “I felt helpless when we first realised the council may not give Daisy the funding because there wasn’t much I could help with. Mum and dad were sorting out the solicitor and emailing the council. I couldn’t help with that, but I wanted to do something that may be useful in some way.”
At the end of 2018, the Myall family received the news that Daisy would not be receiving the funding she needed to complete her final year at Foxes Academy. Failure to complete her final year would have meant that Daisy would not be awarded an NVQ and place her at a disadvantage when looking for work.
Foxes Academy is a specialist college and training hotel for young people with learning disabilities based in Somerset, it promotes independent life skills and work-related experience, and awards professional qualifications to help its graduates find meaningful work and help them make the most of their lives.
On receiving the news, Lauren says: “Daisy was devastated when we told her she couldn’t complete the third year of her three-year course as she was expecting to do. She‘d already been under an undue amount of stress, but she was making amazing progress and was on track
to achieving a qualification.”
After months of not knowing what the future meant for Daisy, earlier this spring, good news came to the Myall family as they were informed that funding had been secured to allow Daisy to finish her NVQ at Foxes Academy, meaning she would receive a full-qualification which would help her future prospects.
Horley’s Battling Blogger
For more information about Lauren’s blog battle and her campaign to raise awareness and funding for education for young adults with disabilities, visit: www.mylittlebigsis.com
For more information about specialist college and training hotel, Foxes Academy
based in Minehead in Somerset, visit: www.foxesacademy.ac.uk
