Season 3, Episode 17

Profiles in Advocacy: Dan Walters Helps Make Change by Being the Changemaker Himself

This episode of Profiles in Advocacy takes us to the post-secondary education sector in Ontario.

Host Melanie Taddeo chats with Dan Walters, who is both a lecturer and the man who coordinates practica for students at Ontario Tech University in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities.

For Dan, this is more than a job of synching up a practical learning setting with the University’s requirements for a student to graduate; his focus is on finding the right ingredients to achieve a qualitive level of empowerment and self-determination for the individual. His method follows the ancient practice of listening, so as not to make assumptions, and to achieve a greater understanding about authentic accessibility and inclusion.

As Dan explains, he's always looking around, self-reflectively, asking: who is not included in the dialogue – whose voice hasn’t been heard at the table?

Listen to the episode and hear from one of Ontario’s most passionate and authentic champions of total inclusivity, and how simple, everyday steps can form a type of advocacy that can become second nature to us.

Learn more about Dan Walters and his approach to the practice of advocating for inclusion and accessibility by visiting Ontario Tech University.

Like Connect4Life, Ontario Tech University is also a recently accredited NGO to the United Nations on matters of disability.

For more information visit www.connect4life.ca.

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