Previous Recipients and Finalists
The 2007 Awards were announced by IDPwD Patron Paula Duncan at a gala awards ceremony at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra on Monday 3 December 2007. The Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, the Hon Jenny Macklin MP and Parliamentary Secretary, the Hon Bill Shorten MP, presented the Awards and congratulated and thanked the recipients and finalists of the Awards, who were selected from over 290 outstanding applications.The 2007 recipients were:
• Mr Keith Hayes - Community Contribution Award (Person with disability who has made a significant contribution to their community)
• Mr Michael Curran - Young Community Contribution Award (Young person with disability who has made a significant contribution to their community, aged between 12 and 25 years)
• Mrs Dawn Brooks - Inclusion Award (Person who has made a significant contribution to improving the lives of people with disability
• Mr Darren Lomman - Go Getter Award (Young person who has made a significant contribution to improving the lives of people with disability, aged between 12 and 25 years)
• Mr Joel Satherley - Personal Achievement Award (Person, either with disability or caring for someone with disability, who has overcome adversity to achieve personal goals)
Congratulations to the 2007 recipients!
More information about the 2007 National Disability Awards Recipients
The 2007 Finalists
The Judges
The Recipients of the 2007 National Disability Awards
• Mr Keith Hayes
• Mr Michael Curran
• Mrs Dawn Brooks
• Mr Darren Lomman
• Mr Joel Satherley
Mr Keith Hayes - Community Contribution Award
Keith became totally blind at the age of nine as a result of a brain tumour. Keith attended a special education unit for primary school and pioneered the integration of blind students into mainstream secondary education in Western Australia (WA). Keith was the first blind student in WA to obtain economics and education degrees and went on to be a TAFE lecturer for 25 years; at times acting as chief examiner and acting head of department.
Keith has been an inspirational role model to his peers and the broader community by contributing to the improvement of the lives of people with disability and local government constituents.
Keith has made a significant contribution to the disability sector in WA over a period of 30 years, including serving on a number of State and Commonwealth Ministerial advisory committees.
Keith is committed to working with and for the community and has spent over 15 years as a local government councillor. Keith is extremely active in all aspects of council business and his work is underpinned by social justice values advocating for all people including the disadvantaged and marginalised persons to have their voice heard. He has also been active in mentoring others to take on leadership roles.
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Mr Michael Curran - Young Community Contribution Award
Michael was born with a number of medical conditions including little to no vision. At 15 years of age, he subsequently lost all his remaining vision after an unsuccessful cornea transplant. These experiences enabled him to develop a passion for computer programming particularly in the area of assistive software for people who are blind and vision impaired.
This passion, coupled with the belief that people with disability should not have to pay extra cost for assistive software, led him to write a couple of assistive software programs. The most successful is a free and open source screen reader called Non-visual Desktop Access (NVDA).
NVDA enables blind and vision impaired people to access computers through synthetic speech output. Michael began working on NVDA in April 2006 and he is able to use it as his only Windows screen reader. Contributions from interested international users have allowed NVDA to be translated in 16 languages.
Michael has also assisted in establishing a non-profit organisation called NV Access to act as a fundraising body that will provide both funding and administrative support to projects that create free, open source assistive technology for people who are blind or vision impaired.
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Mrs Dawn Brooks - Inclusion Award
Dawn's achievements and contributions in the field of disability commenced prior to her personal involvement as a result of her son's acquired brain injury.
Dawn taught for 17 years in South Australian primary schools and in the early 1980's was selected to undertake a 'Behavioural Specialist Course'. From her first teaching appointment, Dawn's classes included some children with disability.
Dawn was also teaching in schools where many children came from disadvantaged backgrounds and had emotional and social problems. Dawn decided to undertake further study for a Social Work qualification to better understand the backgrounds and social problems that her students were encountering.
Her change in career direction and study was interrupted when her 18 year old son had a serious car accident resulting in severe brain injury and injury to his legs. Dawn continued to study during the years of her son's recovery in hospital as well as assisting with her son's rehabilitation.
Dawn was one of five people who recognised the need for an organisation for people with acquired brain injury in South Australia (SA) and took action to establish the Brain Injury Network of SA. Dawn has held the position of Executive Officer since 1993.
A Churchill Fellowship recipient; Dawn introduced SA to the Canadian ARBI model of community rehabilitation that is based on the use of volunteers guided by allied health professionals. This saw the implementation of the 'Springboard' program which is considered unique in Australia.
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Mr Darren Lomman - Go Getter Award
Darren is a young engineer and entrepreneur who founded the Dreamfit foundation - an organisation that develops modified equipment for people with disability. Projects have included hand controlled motorcycles, joystick controlled hovercrafts, seated surfboards, hand controlled driving simulators, wheelchair accessible yachts and speed boats and wheelchair accessible abseiling towers.
Darren is diversifying Dreamfit to include a range of other services and equipment areas including rehabilitation equipment, workplace modifications, fitness equipment, innovative mobility solutions and adapted vehicles.
Darren also strives to raise awareness of disability issues in the community. He actively creates valuable links between different sectors, organised the 2006 Celebration of Ability expo, is the president of the DisAbled Recreation Club and volunteers with a number of organisations including the Disabled Surfing Association.
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Mr Joel Satherley - Personal Achievement Award
Joel is a young man facing multiple challenges. Even though it is difficult for him to master language, movement, thought processes and social behaviour; Joel manages to live a rich, fun and rewarding life thanks to the loving support of family and friends and being firmly embedded in the social fabric of his local community.
Despite having Cerebral Palsy and Autism, Joel has a popular weekly radio show, is preparing for a major art exhibition, performs as a busker and has recorded his own CD of original music.
Joel regularly presents his story at disability conferences and demonstrates how being in a supportive environment leads to an inclusive life. He also explains that having an inclusive mainstream education assists in becoming a highly valued and contributing community member.
Joel has recently fulfilled his long time dream of climbing the sacred mountain Wollumbin (Mt Warning) - a gruelling 10 hour hike, with the help of 35 volunteers who worked in 10 minute shifts of two people to assist in the climb. Despite not being able to see anything due to the mountain being enveloped in cloud and rain, Joel's euphoria and cheers of glee kept everyone's spirits high.
Joel taught everyone involved that you can create your own reality and that passion, single mindedness and belief in yourself can help manifest personal dreams and goals in life.
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The 2007 Finalists
Over 290 nominations were received for the inaugural National Disability Awards, out of which 23 finalists were selected. Congratulations to all who were nominated! The calibre of all nominations was extremely high, and selecting the finalists and recipients was not an easy task for the judges.
There Awards boast five award categories, and the 2007 finalists in each category were:
Community Contribution Award (Person with disability who has made a significant contribution to their community)
• Stephen Brown
• Andrew Buchanan
• Keith Hayes (2007 Recipient)
• Melissa Ryan
Young Community Contribution Award (Young person with disability who has made a significant contribution to their community, aged between 12 and 25 years)
• Michael Curran (2007 Recipient)
• Dawson Ko
• Chris Van Ingen
• James Vantol
• Sean Webber
• Joshua Yates
Inclusion Award (Person who has made a significant contribution to improving the lives of people with disability)
• Dawn Brooks (2007 Recipient)
• Philip French
• Peter Persson
• Richard Stubbs
Go Getter Award (Young person who has made a significant contribution to improving the lives of people with disability, aged between 12 and 25 years)
• Alicia Hemmings
• Darren Lomman (2007 Recipient)
• Jayme Paris
Personal Achievement Award (Person, either with disability or caring for someone with disability, who has overcome adversity to achieve personal goals)
• Carolyn Campbell- McLean
• Michael Evans
• Kristian Kupsch
• Mike Rowney
• Joel Satherley (2007 Recipient)
• Glynis Thyer
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The Judges
The judges for the 2007 Awards were:
• Ken Baker - Ken provides advice to governments and information to service providers on a broad range of disability policy matters and is Chief Executive Officer of National Disability Services.
• Paul Nunnari - Paul is a three time Australian Paralympic representative, a Sydney 2000 silver medalist and a campaigner for opportunity and inclusion for people with disability and their carers.
• Samantha Jenkinson - Samantha is currently the acting CEO of the Australian Federation of Disability Organisations and is heavily involved in advocating and promoting the rights of people with disability.
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