Doughnut Economics - Reflections

Written by Shahd Zorob

Shahd and Owen speaking at an event.

The keynote speaker, Kate Raworth, gave a brilliant talk. I loved her strong commitment to educating people from a very young age. I also enjoyed attending several panel discussions addressing questions about how we can work together to bring about positive change. There was a fantastic “open space”  for practical learning, facilitated by Yvonne Murphy.

This was the first conference of its kind in Wales, and there were some teething problems.  For example, around the quality of the catering, and there wasn’t enough to go round! Personally I would have appreciated a short orientation to the venue at the beginning of the day too. And I think that there was such a lot on the programme that a two-day event might have made more sense. 

I think it is very important to put disability and inclusion in the forefront of all our public conversations, and by that I mean not only when we are talking about health or disability. Speaking as a disabled woman of Egyptian heritage, I have felt segregated and excluded from conversations and information throughout my life. 

Much more needs to be done to bring disabled people and people who are marginalised into the forefront of discussions, and I would very much encourage the next conference to embrace inclusion and diversity as core values when making the conference programme and inviting speakers. We don’t need to be hearing about disabled people, we need to be hearing from disabled people.