Education | Talk on cerebral palsy to inspire people overcoming challenges

Joan Latta

International speaker and trainer Joan Latta visited The International School of Macao (TIS) yesterday to deliver a talk on the importance of overcoming personal challenges.

United Kingdom-based Latta is well known for her talks about personal challenges, based on her own life with cerebral palsy (CP).

“It is an absolute privilege to be here and do what I’m doing. My key aim is to inspire, educate and spread the message about cerebral palsy,” Latta told the Times. She was appreciative of the opportunity to speak with young people, observing that the more educated and aware newer generations are, the more inclusive they can be.

When asked about the motto she wishes to convey to others, Latta said, “If I can do it, so can they. No matter what obstacles you have, you can still overcome them.”

“I get a lot of positive feed-back from my talks. Normally after a talk people start to follow me on [social media platforms] and keep up to date with what I’m doing,” she said. She adds that although her main talk is always the same, she does make adjustments according to the audience.

She began her talk with an explanation of CP and her experience with it, which led to the development of a variety of permanent disorders that mostly affected her movement.

“In my case, at birth, I was starved of oxygen for about half an hour and the doctors said, she’ll never do anything. It took a lot of work to overcome cerebral palsy and to become who I am today,” Latta said, explaining what her online awareness awakening and education platform, “Cerebral Palsy Alive and Kicking” is all about. She runs this company on her own.

Latta admitted that she enjoys speaking to the younger generation because “as [they] grow-up they will learn more about CP, realize that is OK to be different and will find it easy to tackle prejudice.”

Latta uses her life as an example that all can follow. Despite the daily difficulties stemming from her diagnosis, she graduated from a mainstream school and completed a degree in science.

But Latta’s success has not been restricted to proving her intellectual capabilities. She has undertaken a series of physical challenges, including running long distances of around 30km in under four hours, and participating in a hiking event in which she completed over 1,000km in 10 weeks.

Latta’s talk, organized by TIS Inclusion Academy, also marked the debut of the school’s new black box theatre.