Sammy Everard

This year has been very interesting as I have been working on my PhD with the Centre for Seldom Heard Voices at Bournemouth University. This research is enabling me to hear the narrative of the disabled community to better understand how they seek to engage with formal self-employment support. I cannot wait to share the research with everyone.

In my day job at SAMEE, I have been working on a supported self-employment internship which is engaging those disabled people who have a skill or talent and want to create an independent income. The supported self-employment internship is based upon the business idea of the disabled person and we create opportunities for them to gain the valuable experience they need. It is gaining lots of attention as is ground-breaking and we, at SAMEE, are really enjoying the journey with our disabled mentees.

When I first started SAMEE, I was really worried about whether it would work. My confidence was fairly low as I knew I had to compete with the big prime contractors but everyone told me I was special and unique. This was because SAMEE was there for the individual, we had no tick boxes, no eligibility criteria and our disabled mentees could take as long as they wanted exploring their ideas without the time constraints. 9 years on and the charity has over a thousand mentees, many of which are trading sustainably, so my message is “TRY”. The worse case scenario is the plan doesn’t work and you have a bit of a learning curve .. but you don’t know what you don’t know!

Every day I get up knowing I can make a difference, whether that be speaking to someone that has finally built up the confidence to ask for help, sharing my own lived experience so that others know that they will be ok or co-creating a bespoke resource to help someone in their daily life. That’s what motivates me as each successful small step for a disabled mentee opens up another opportunity or boost in confidence.