The task of the moderators is to discover and to develop their own autism respectively, to take possession of and continuously cultivate the autistic world they are born into.
One aim of the project is to spread the knowledge of moderating workshops "autistic skills" among autistic people. Those who achieved some experiences in moderating introduce themselves here.
Hamburg, Germany
hajo.seng @ autsocial . de
Hajo was 31 years old when he learned he is autistc. This has been confirmed 1998 as a "suspicious diagnose" and 2008 as a "official" diagnose. 2002 he contacted autistic communities and founded 2003 one of the early self organised self-help groups in Hamburg. 2005 he supported the founding of Aspies e.V., beginning 2009 he co-founded the autWorker project; he is board member of Aspies e.V. and autSocial. Since summer 2009 he met more than 750 autistic humans within more than 120 workshops "autistic skills"; about three quarters of them aged around 20. He is writing a Ph.D. thesis on his experiences within the workshops called "an approach to autistic experience - attempt at a collage", supervised by Prof. Georg Theunissen.
He has a university degree (diploma) in mathematics and works since 2009 as a technical project manager for the online catalogue beluga at the State and University Library in Hamburg. He started his schooling at a special school but promoted to th regular school later. After his "Abitur" (university-entrance diploma) he experienced a deep psychical crisis. His husband Andreas Hieronymus, who he met beginning of 1986, finally gave him the support he needed to get out again. He studied mathemarics from 1990 until 1997. Meanwhile he had diverse minor jobs most of them with handicapped people. After another deep psychical crisis he startet working as programmer in 2000. His employment at the library was the first time he found a job which is suitable and where he can apply his strengths; he got it aged 46.
End of 2003 he got a diagnose Waldenstrom macroglobulinemia and a second diagnose eine MGUS with monoclonal IgA type kappa. The parameters were almost record-breaking (95% bone mark proliferation, 83 g/l IgM in blood). As a consequence I hat two and a half year chemo- and antibody therapy with Bendamustine and Rituximab.
Örebro, Sweden
Serena has a Master degree in Civil Engineering and Construction. She also has a Doctors degree in water treatment from the University of Uppsala. Serena worked for many years as a process engineer. She later worked as an area market manager for an international company and for a while as a self-employed technical consultant. For many years she suffered from severe stress and different kind of stress related symptoms; but did not find the reason why. She realized that she often became tired by tasks which were considered to be easy. At the same time it was easy for her to do assignments which was difficult and hard for others.
When she got the diagnose Aspergers Syndrome she thought that it explained the situation, described above. She was then 45 years old. She started studying autism. She considered autism as having a great advantage in life. She was proud of her brain which she thought produced so many interesting ideas. She got an education in coaching and an education in communication, related to autism. She also had an education in project management. She started working with different kinds of support for autistic people in order to find good strategies for autistic people, to deal with life.
Serena started the project Autistiskt Initiativ. Between 2014 and 2017 she was project manager for this project which had the goal to create an educational concept for autistic people who wanted to prepare themselves for a career. The project Autistiskt Initiativ cooperated with autWorker and Hajo Seng. Among other things, Hajo held a workshop on autistic skills at Autistiskt Initiativ, in Sweden.
Serena is the chairwoman of a non-profit association which is called VildmarksAutisterna. Its purpose is to promote nature and wilderness interests among autistic people. The association has as well the goal to create and to spread an established inside knowledge of autism.