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Articles
Canadian musical group wins Stuttering Foundation award
Written by Lisa Wilder
Saturday, 30 June 2012 07:41
The Canadian band Hello Kelly has won an award from the Stuttering Foundation, an American organization helping those who stutter. The award, presented in New York last month by foundation president Jane Fraser, was for "Converting Awareness into Action", in recognition of creating hope and inspiration in the stuttering community. The band treated the audience at the awards ceremony to an unplugged performance of the celebrated song off their sophomore album, Easy for You to Say, entitled "Communication Breakdown".
This article was first published in the Fall/Winter 2011 version of CSA Voices.
Upon returning home from the National Stuttering Association conference in Fort Worth, Texas last year, I’ll admit that one of the first things I did was log onto Facebook. Its normal addictive powers are even greater when you come home from a conference that hosted 800 people and you want to connect with them. During the first few post-conference days, I felt like I was high on Facebook. I spent more hours than usual on it, adding new stuttering friends and browsing through profiles. It’s the power of social media.
At sixteen, when applying for my first job, l was told by an employment officer that due to my stuttering, I would never be employed, never have a social life, never be married and never have children. He could not have been more wrong. It was never easy, though. I tried every company in my own home town and when I did not find any employment there, I tried every company in an ever widening circle. Finally I secured a position as an apprentice draftsperson, 10 kilometers from my home town.
After serving my apprenticeship, my supervisor told me I should stay with the company for the rest of my life because no other company would hire me with my speech impediment. After that I change my job every six months.
This article was originally published in the Winter 2011 edition of CSAVoices.
I found myself laid off quite unexpectedly last year. My workplace of the last 9 years no longer needed my skills. As thoughts of what new adventure awaits ran around inside my head, I was also starting to worry about stuttering in job interviews. A worry I haven’t had for a decade.
Would employers discriminate against my stuttering? Would they think the usual myths about stuttering? That I am a person of weak character or low intelligence?
For about as long as I can remember I have been a person that stutters. As a young boy my parents thought nothing of my stutter. They thought that, if anything, it would be something I would outgrow with time. When I entered school, my teachers right away identified that I had a stutter, and it was recommended that I take speech therapy, which I did, at the young age of five.
The Canadian band Hello Kelly has won an award from the Stuttering Foundation, an American organization helping those who stutter. The award, presented in New York last month by foundation president Jane Fraser, was for "Converting Awareness into Action", in recognition of creating hope and inspiration in the stuttering community. The band treated the audience at the awards ceremony to an unplugged performance of the celebrated song off their sophomore album, Easy for You to Say, entitled "Communication Breakdown".
Upon returning home from the National Stuttering Association conference in Fort Worth, Texas last year, I’ll admit that one of the first things I did was log onto Facebook. Its normal addictive powers are even greater when you come home from a conference that hosted 800 people and you want to connect with them. During the first few post-conference days, I felt like I was high on Facebook. I spent more hours than usual on it, adding new stuttering friends and browsing through profiles. It’s the power of social media.
At sixteen, when applying for my first job, l was told by an employment officer that due to my stuttering, I would never be employed, never have a social life, never be married and never have children. He could not have been more wrong. It was never easy, though. I tried every company in my own home town and when I did not find any employment there, I tried every company in an ever widening circle. Finally I secured a position as an apprentice draftsperson, 10 kilometers from my home town.
This article was originally published in the Winter 2011 edition of CSAVoices.