The Social Media Exchange is our annual creative day for the charity sector celebrating the power of digital storytelling and its potential to have a positive impact on the world around us. Always a highlight of the day, our Lightning Talks bring together three thought-provoking speakers who define our event theme ‘Championing our Stories’. Our speakers are using their own experiences to create change. This year we were thrilled to have Travon Steadman share his story as a care leaver and the change he wants to see.
Travon works with Drive Forward Foundation, a London-based charity that supports care-experienced young people into employment, training and education. Before joining the team, he was a “service-user” and is a committed Ambassador and member of the charity’s Policy Forum. He is a strong believer in the power of lived experience to drive change and progress; highlighting the struggles young people face under government protection. His own journey has made him so much more aware of the struggle and pain of others, but also of how society looks at care-experienced people. A word that’s often used in conjunction with the care-experienced is “resilience”. But Travon refuses to accept this term, as he believes that it adds to the many misconceptions attached to the tag “care experienced”. He recently participated in a BBC Three production “Things Not to Say” on the topic of homelessness.
Listen to his talk:
Connect with Travon on Linkedin and share your comments on Twitter on the hashtag #SMEX19. You can read Travon’s full script here.
We’re crowdfunding a six month mentoring programme to form a network of media confident storytellers with lived experiences of the social challenges facing society today. Find out more and support our crowdfunder.