2024 RYV wrap up report
The 2024 Raise Your Voice! (RYV!) series wrapped in November, and we here at CTD would like to extend a warm thank you to our sponsors, guest speakers, and participants who called in or followed along through emails. Raise Your Voice! had another successful year of informative and well-attended bi-weekly virtual sessions.
RYV! events are designed to provide a functional understanding of our state’s legislative process while connecting emerging and seasoned advocates. Since 2016, CTD’s RYV! events have been a path for Texas disability advocates and self-advocates to connect on issues, get help submitting testimony, comments, and other actions, and share their concerns with advocacy groups and experts. We also use this program to get feedback on policy issues from Texans with disabilities outside of our usual circles.
In 2024, we focused our series on discussion of policy developments and ways to take action during the interim legislative session. In our anonymous feedback survey, the #1 aspect of RYV! that participants liked the most was “having regular opportunities to interact with CTD advocacy team and other advocates”. Every session, the information provided by CTD and our partners was met with personal stories from participants that helped deepen our understanding of the issues. Sometimes we had breakout group discussions where people could share their stories in small groups, which participants reported liking and wanting more of in 2025.
Our RYV! series covered a broad range of topics including:
- CTD policy priorities such as dental care and attendant wages
- current events such as election results and Senate and House interim charges
- general issues such as web accessibility and disaster preparedness.
We were joined for these sessions by a wide network of community partners including Disability Rights Texas (DRTx), ADAPT of Texas, and Every Texan. We also welcomed expert guest speakers like doctors, service providers, and self-advocates.
As always, accessibility was a major priority for us. We've worked to keep RYV accessible to people with disabilities and people across the state by:
- staying in the virtual space (one survey participant reported: “these online sessions are wonderful for those of us who can’t travel anymore and go to meetings.”)
- providing live captioning at every session, and fulfilling other requests as we received them.
- using follow up emails to share transcripts, chat logs, summaries, and all kinds of resources discussed on each session.
Thank you again to all who engaged with the Raise Your Voice! Series this year. We are truly grateful for your involvement, feedback, and support, and hope to see you again next year. Raise Your Voice! is relaunching on Monday, January 27, 2025. If you are interested in participating, sign up to receive a notification when 2025 registration is open.
