Emma receives award from Dyspraxia Foundation
Emma was delighted to attend the Dyspraxia Foundation’s 26th Annual General Meeting at the weekend, and was honoured to be presented with the organisation’s Mary Colley Award for raising awareness of Dyspraxia. Emma was chosen as this year’s winner because of her work raising public awareness of dyspraxia through her work in Parliament.
As well as raising dyspraxia in parliamentary debates and questions, Emma has also used her position as an MP to speak publicly about the condition and spread the word about the challenges dyspraxics face. An interview with the Daily Telegraph was published last year – you can read it by clicking here.
The award is named in honour of Mary Colley, who helped to establish the Dyspraxia Foundation Adult Support Group and the Developmental Adult Neuro-Diversity Association (DANDA).
Accepting the award, Emma said:
“It is a huge honour and pleasure to receive this award. I never had the pleasure of meeting Mary, but she certainly sounds like my kind of woman. I read an interview with her and she said that all of her teachers told her not to aim for University and that she was unlikely to even pass her A Levels. ‘At that point I was determined to prove them wrong,’ she said. And that she certainly did.
“That comment for me sums up the iron clad will of dyspraxics. We are all so much better than society makes us feel and I am always going to work hard to show how capable and fantastic we are.
“Everyone in this room does so much more than I have ever done for dypraxics. I feel like this award should go to all of you, but since it is my first ever award as an MP I am selfishly going to hold onto it and be proud every day I look at it. Thanks to all of you, and especially the Foundation for making me feel so at home and helping me to talk publicly about something that is so personal.”