Pride in helping others
Sherry Shortman takes pride in her work advocating for others.
By Sherry Shortman
Hi, my name is Sherry Shortman.
I live in Kamloops. I have lived here all my adult life and have owned my own home for the last four years.
I was born on the Sunshine Coast but moved to Kamloops when I was a baby. I was sick at the time and my Grandma helped my Mom out by taking me home with her. I went back and forth a bit, but really I settled here in Kamloops and I call it home.
A word to describe me is busy. I work and sit on a lot of boards and committees. I see my friends and then there is always my cat.
I work for the Kamloops Society for Community Living as a Peer Advisor. I help people to understand their rights and find different resources in the community. I also help with advocacy, when people need help filling out forms, understanding systems like Persons With Disabilities (PWD) and so on. I find the advocacy very satisfying. It is great to support people to get what they need.
I guess my roots for advocating with others go all the way back to when I was in high school. I went to Overlander Senior Secondary here in Kamloops. My best friend went to the same school and she was being bullied by a group of girls. I was mad. I went and confronted the girls and asked them why they were teasing her. Their answer was that it was fun to tease her and make her cry. I was fuming mad and just then the principal appeared and I told him what was going on. The girls got detention, the bullying stopped and that was the beginning of my advocacy career.
Over the years, I have served on many committees and boards. I was on the Board of Directors for the Kamloops Society for Community Living for sixteen years. That was a great board. We did fundraising, helped out at bingo, and worked on Community Living Day.
I have also been involved with the BC Self Advocacy Caucus, BC People First and the BC Self Advocacy Foundation Board of Directors. In 1993, I started the Kamloops Self Advocate Group and last year I started the Greystone People First Group here in Kamloops
The BC Self Advocacy Foundation has a big campaign they are starting. The campaign is called “No More Barriers” and has been a lot of work. We have a new logo for the Foundation and we also developed a short video that tells the story of the community living movement.
The campaign is about exploring ways to raise awareness about our human rights and start a conversation about making them real for everyone. It is about learning about our past to prevent history from repeating itself.The campaign will be launched in the early summer and I am pretty excited about that!
For fun I crochet blankets and dishcloths. Lots of people like my dishcloths and I give them to all my friends. The thing I love most is watching my cat climb on things and bounce off the walls. She is very entertaining.
To learn more about the Self Advocacy Foundation’s “No More Barriers” campaign, please read the story on page 15.
Inside Voice is published in each issue of The Citizen. If you are interested in writing for this column, please call Chris Rae at 1-877-660-2522, or email editor@communitylivingbc.ca
