Hi everyone!  My name's Adam; I'm a 22-year-old student at UCL, and I was born with Hemiplegic Cerebral Palsy. On the 13th October 2019, I am running the London Half Marathon for Scope, hoping to raise crucial money and awareness which will significantly aid the lives of millions of physically disabled individuals living in the UK today.

What is Scope?

Scope is a national disability charity whose aim is to challenge and defeat the intrinsic social stigmas that promote social, professional and economical discrimination. They are advocates of the social model of disability, which believes that people are disabled by barriers in society, not by impairment or difference. Their charitable work to aid disabled lives in the UK remains unparalleled.

My Story

Being physically disabled presents great challenges. I have substantially impaired motor function in the right-side of my body, and as a result live with the use of only one hand. As you can imagine, its an always-inconvenient, often-demanding way of living.

In spite of the physical boundaries I have faced, I believe there is a broader problem which I, and every disabled individual, (particularly disabled youth), face today, and its an issue of well-being:

In a modern society dominated by social media and aesthetically-ascribed value, mental health has become a sky-rocketing pandemic, particularly among disabled youth, who are 3 times more likely to develop mental health conditions than able-bodied youth. Physical burdens are debilitating, often painfully so, yet it is in combination with the self-esteem and confidence issues that originate in social stigma and all its resulting ostracisation, (4/10 parents, for example, say their disabled children rarely or never have the opportunity to play with able-bodied children), that disability becomes truly destructive: 49% of disabled people say they feel completely ostracised by society, and we are 4 times more likely to commit suicide than able-bodied people as a result. These statistics ought to shock all of us, reprehensible as they are, yet they remain hidden from conversation. So long as this remains the case, they are unlikely to improve at all. But that can change.

Support my fundraising and let's end disability inequality today.