My name is Iva Klarić and I have been on the sidelines of the Green ASC VET project from its very beginnings.
I am a mother of a 12-year-old profoundly autistic boy and the coordinator of the local Association of persons with autism and their caregivers. As the coordinator of the Association Plavi cvijet (the name of the Association) I was asked, at the beginning of the project, to participate in activities concerning the project development. What started as me supporting every project that supports autistic individuals, turned into lifelong friendships, admiration and gratitude to the people involved in the project.
I have stated several times (and will repeat myself again) that the most astonishing thing about this project for me, as a mother of an autistic child and someone who has lived and experienced all the lonely aspects of this life, is that the initiators and almost all of the participants in this project had no affiliation with autism prior to this project activities. That means that people with different backgrounds have recognized the need to help the autistic community feel seen, accepted, equal. This is a very rare thing to happen, because experience shows that almost all initiatives that aim to improve lives of autistic individuals come from necessity and desperation of someone who has lived it.
The Green ASC VET project aimed to help autistic individuals create their own stories. We have seen too many times that the vocation and life direction are chosen for autistic individuals by either their caregivers, schools or different institutions with little to no regard to the feelings and needs of the individuals in question. We are not wrong to assume that all these decisions are made in good faith, but they are still made for someone else. In the desire to help, we often forget that our job, as people who want to help autistic individuals, is not to do something for them but to create appropriate circumstances to help them do it themselves. This is what the Green ASC VET project is all about, creating an environment that supports autistic specificity and allows them to make informed decisions about their future. Over the course of three years, the project team has used state-of-the-art technologies to create virtual occupations and training opportunities so that young people who use these platforms can truly experience what it means to work in different occupations and, based on that experience, make the right choices for themselves.
It has been truly remarkable to watch these platforms being developed with so much care and thought, and I have no doubt in my mind that they will find their way to standard classrooms. But what is truly important about this project is that this project is an excellent example of what true inclusive practice should look like, supporting other people’s needs and trying to understand them. I always ask people who are new to our world to see the person/the child behind the behavior and that is exactly what this project does. Thank you once again!