Article
Background
Pauline’s Action Project was developed from her experience at Amsterdam University College, where she discovered that initiatives aimed at students with disabilities were hardly translating into a lived sense of inclusivity.
She noticed a lack of discussion about the specific challenges faced by students with disabilities, both inside and outside the classroom. Despite existing initiatives, she personally experienced a communication gap regarding available accommodations for disabled students and a lack of awareness among lecturers on how to best support these students in succeeding at university.
As a student living with a disability herself, Pauline wondered, “Am I the only one noticing this lack of lived inclusivity? What can I do to bring this issue to the forefront and get people talking about it?”
“The 2023 Amsterdam Fellowship was a source of inspiration for this project, and it was a time in which I experienced the Fellows make space for my voice and experience as a disabled woman, an experience that was also mirrored to my Action Project.”
Approach & Methodology
The project that followed was initiated as a conversation starter: over the span of a year, Pauline engaged in discussions with faculty, staff, and student representatives. In collaboration with other students, she also surveyed the student body to find out whether this was indeed a prominent issue in the community, and what suggestions the community would have to bridge the gap.
These meetings and the survey confirmed her impression that there was indeed a need to break away from harmful stereotypes and shame surrounding disabilities and instead build understanding, curiosity and community. Building on these findings, she developed a workshop for teaching faculty, which summarized these findings and placed them in a larger structural framework within the Dutch higher education landscape.
This workshop also offered the opportunity to raise questions and discuss concerns in order to develop collaborative solutions.
Impact
Pauline is currently busy with concluding this project by writing a policy proposal, which at its center has the installation of a Disability Help Desk in her university. This Disability Help Desk is intended to help students with accommodation requests, legal and financial aid, as well as lecturers, by providing them with helpful teaching resources.
Furthermore, it should also serve as an institutional memory / database for the university, exemplarily by recording projects such as this one.
Finally, this Disability Help Desk would also serve as an instance to always have someone to address questions and concerns to, to live inclusivity in the institution. Pauline has reached out to all other university colleges across the country. She did so in hopes of establishing a network for all students living with disabilities going to university colleges, and to learn from one another’s projects and progress regarding the access of disabled students to the proper resources.
Fifty students were directly impacted by Pauline’s projects, and 1,000 people were indirectly impacted.
Next Steps
Even though the workshop was fully prepared and finished content-wise, we decided to postpone the workshop to next semester due to the current protests on campuses across the country, and offer it as part of the on-boarding of new staff.
Pauline is currently finalizing the Policy Report that she will hand in to her university for a review, which hopefully leads to the implementation of some of the proposed changes.
Lastly, as she has reached out to many other university colleges, she hopes to form a university-college-wide student association of students living with disabilities, because this project taught her that community and collaboration really are key to achieving change.
Pauline is happy to discuss possible collaborations and hear about your ideas. Reach out to her directly here.