Meet Our Champions
Meet our champions. They are local people who live with, or care for someone with disability. Each one brings their own skills, story, and lived experience. Get to know the people helping others in your community.
Our Champions and Expert Advisory Group members speak for themselves. They do not speak for Wide Bay Advocacy. Only people Wide Bay Advocacy has given permission to can speak for the organisation.
Emery, Fraser Coast
Foundational Supports Community Champion
Emery lives in Hervey Bay and has called the Fraser Coast home for around 14 years. Life outside the program is full: wheelchair basketball, Dungeons and Dragons, board games, a lot of plants, and a rotating list of hobbies picked up, put down, and happily returned to.
Emery has lived experience of disability and a strong belief in the power of peer support. When Emery first needed support, it was confusing and overwhelming to work out alone. What made the difference was another person with lived experience who sat down, listened, and helped.
That is what Emery hopes to offer others as a Foundational Supports Community Champion. Not a service. A person you can talk to.
The program has given Emery a way to turn hard-won experience into something useful for others. Emery talks about growing more confident, and about learning just how many people in the area are doing it tough without support. For Emery, the training builds on a belief that was already there: that peer support changes things.
In Emery’s words:
“Champion may sound daunting, but it’s really just someone that people can talk to.”
Tina, Childers
Foundational Supports Community Champion
Tina lives on a rural property at Childers and works in Bundaberg. She and her husband moved north from Brisbane four years ago, drawn to the farming country between the two towns. Life outside work is full. She is a volunteer rural firefighter, a historical society treasurer, and is learning to run a 57 acre property from scratch, tractors, augers and all.
Tina has spent more than twenty years in government and community roles, and now works in the disability and community sector. What she brings to the program is a deep belief in listening, and in helping people feel heard.
For Tina, being a Champion is about connection. It is about taking the time to understand what someone actually needs, and remembering that the journey belongs to them.
The program has given Tina new ways to see issues she already cares about. She values learning alongside the other Champions and the experiences they share. It has also reminded her of something simple. Stop. Listen. Then the answer will come.
In Tina’s words:
“It’s not your journey, it’s their journey.”
Barbara, Hervey Bay
Foundational Supports Community Champion
Barbara has lived in Hervey Bay on and off since 1983. She has watched it grow from a small town into a busy coastal city. She loves the water, her garden, a good book, and the company of her four cats.
Barbara knows what it is like to live with disability. She also knows how isolating it can feel when support is hard to find and the people around you do not quite understand. That is a big part of why she became a Foundational Supports Community Champion.
For Barbara, being a Champion is simple. It is about connecting with people. It is about listening. It is about making a difference in someone’s day, even a small one.
The program has built on what Barbara already had. She talks about growing in confidence, getting better at listening, and learning to look past a diagnosis or a hard day to the person in front of her. Being part of a group of local people who care about the same things has been a big part of that.
In Barbara’s words:
“Connecting with people, getting to know new people, and being able to make a difference in their lives, even if it’s only tiny.”
Her advice for anyone unsure about reaching out:
“Just do it, give it a go. You’ve got nothing to lose. There’s only things to gain.”
Lara, Childers
Foundational Supports Community Champion
Lara lives on a farm at Childers with her husband. Her great-grandfather cleared that land back in the 1800s. It has stayed in the family ever since. Her brother lives on one part of it. Her mum and dad live on another.
She loves the quiet out there. The dog has room to run. There are a few cows. No neighbours two feet away. Bundaberg is close by when she needs it. Brisbane is near enough for a day out.
Lara has lived experience of disability. She worked at a medical centre for nine years. When that came to an end, she felt a bit lost.
Then she noticed something. One afternoon she sat around a table with her husband, her brother and her sister-in-law. Three of the four people there had a brother or sister with disability. Lara is the fourth, and she has a disability herself. She had never seen it that clearly before.
So she signed up to become a Foundational Supports Community Champion. She started out knowing very little about disability support. She says there was not one module where she thought, I knew that already.
One lesson stuck more than the rest. You do not have to fix people. You just have to help them.
In Lara’s words:
“You don’t know if you don’t ask.”
Karen, Fraser Coast
Foundational Supports Community Champion
Karen is Fraser Coast based. She splits her time between Maryborough and Hervey Bay. She moved to the region in 2010, when she was seven, and it has been home ever since.
She loves that you can be in the bush, out in the country or down at the beach, all within 45 minutes. She loves the people even more.
One memory sits above the rest. Karen was in grade one or two when the 2011 floods hit. Her mum took her down to the big community venue in Maryborough. Boats were lined up outside. Inside there were clothes and food laid out. Nurses were handing out medicine. Small boats were being loaded with supplies for Granville, which was cut off. That is what community looks like to her.
Karen has lived experience of disability. She started volunteering when she was seven. She was at the RSL with her family, the way they were most Friday nights. Legacy was there looking for helpers. Karen asked if she could be one. She was told she was too young. Her mum said she had to ask for herself. She did, and they let her in.
She is twenty three now, and she has been doing community and policy work since she was fourteen.
The Champion program gave her something she did not have before. Other people with lived experience to lean on. She says the work used to feel like a solo game.
In Karen’s words:
“You don’t have to know everything to be a Champion. You just have to be willing to listen.”
Kristie, South Burnett
Foundational Supports Community Champion
Kristie lives on a cattle property out of Kumbia in the South Burnett, about 35 kilometres from Kingaroy. Home is a busy place. Her husband James works on the property. Their son Mitchell is eleven. They breed Australian Stock Horses, and Kristie runs her own bookkeeping business.
Plenty of weekends are spent at camp drafts and gymkhanas. It is where the family catches up with people, and where they get to show the horses they breed.
Kristie has lived experience of disability. She spent a long time working the support system out on her own. The hard part was not knowing where to start.
She knows what it is like in the country too. Support is easier to find in town. The further out you live, the harder it gets.
That is why Kristie became a Foundational Supports Community Champion. Not to fix things for people. To be someone they can talk to.
In Kristie’s words:
“I’d really like to have someone like that in my corner too.”