{"id":61682,"date":"2024-12-10T10:48:56","date_gmt":"2024-12-10T10:48:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sense.org.uk\/?p=61682"},"modified":"2025-01-13T13:47:49","modified_gmt":"2025-01-13T13:47:49","slug":"mo-sense-campaigner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sense.org.uk\/blog\/mo-sense-campaigner\/","title":{"rendered":"Mo’s tireless campaigning for people with disabilities to be heard"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Everyone calls Mohammed \u2018Mo\u2019. Sense has supported Mo for a few years, and now he\u2019s doing an incredible amount to support us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mo has been out campaigning, backing our plan for change<\/a>. He\u2019s opened up about his experience of political representation, voting and campaigning with Sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Mo,<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I’m someone who\u2019ll always advocate for people with disabilities, it’s a passion of mine. I’ll campaign where I can. Whenever I get invited to join in or show support, I always ask, \u201cWhat about disabled people? How are we involved in your policies and your events?\u201d For a long time, we’ve not been heard, and change hasn’t come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sense, I would say, put together one of the few plans that not only champion, but also prioritise, people with disabilities and complex needs. I\u2019m very optimistic and hopeful that people are going to start listening and the change will happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t feel valued enough<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

During the local elections, I was following a lot of the party campaigns and I also read a lot of the manifestos. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I write to party representatives in my area saying, ‘What are you going to provide for disabled people?’ and they never answer. Politicians don\u2019t understand what it\u2019s like to live with a disability, and they need to listen to us to learn.”<\/p>Mo, Sense campaigner<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In all of them, every party, they hadn\u2019t bothered prioritising or even speaking to disabled people. That really made me really angry and disappointed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t vote because I didn\u2019t feel that we were valued enough throughout the local election process. It felt like that people with disabilities are being put on the backburners when we should be the forefront of their campaigns and also within their manifestos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Disabled people face double the issues of non-disabled people. Our cost of living is the biggest \u2013 we can’t pay bills, we can’t go out and buy food, prices are too much. Also, there\u2019s issues with accessible transport and lack of accessible venues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I write to party representatives in my area saying, \u201cWhat are you going to provide for disabled people?\u201d and they never answer. Politicians don\u2019t understand what it\u2019s like to live with a disability, and they need to listen to us to learn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Mo,<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Reaching people in need<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll tell you a little story how I got involved with campaigning for Sense. For a while, I had been part of the Sense employment service at TouchBase Pears. One day, I got chatting to one of the Sense campaigns team who said that my passion and experience would make me a good campaigner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After that, we kept talking. I\u2019ve done quite a few things with Sense now, around the general election as well. I\u2019ve given articles to the local newspapers such as Big Issue and Birmingham Live and Birmingham Mail just before the general elections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s been a great experience, telling them how I feel and sharing a bit of my side of things. I hope that more opportunities like this will come my way, and I look forward to doing more work with Sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I really hope that the work that I\u2019m doing \u2013 that Sense is doing \u2013 does reach the people that it needs to reach to, like the government, and the new PM. They only get five years so if the promised change doesn\u2019t come, then the people who helped get them where they are will turn away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sense has supported Mo for a few years, and now he\u2019s doing an incredible amount to support us. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":61694,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":true,"_searchwp_excluded":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"display_author":[1334],"class_list":["post-61682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","display_author-mohammed-azeem"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sense.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sense.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sense.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sense.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sense.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sense.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sense.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sense.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sense.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sense.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61682"},{"taxonomy":"display_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sense.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/display_author?post=61682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}