What does self-advocacy mean?

Self-advocacy means speaking up for our rights, our needs and the things that are important to us.

We self-advocate in many ways and we do it for many reasons.

We self-advocate when we make everyday choices for ourselves, like what clothes we want to wear and what food we want to eat.

We also self-advocate when we:

let other people know what is OK and not OK in our life;
ask for a change in a situation when something is not OK for us;
talk about our skills and what we can offer in a job interview;
identify a problem in our life, work out who can help us fix the problem, and then communicate with that person to get it solved;
talk to people in power, like politicians, about what matters to us and the changes that we want to see made in policies and laws.

We self-advocate

to make our lives better;
to remind people that we have rights and that we should be treated fairly and with the same respect as everyone else;
to have our say in the decision-making in our families, communities, and in the world of politics.

We self-advocate because we all share the same human rights.

We will explore human rights in this section.