EMPOWERED Champions held its first Speed Mate Disco on Saturday, February 23, with the National Disability Insurance Scheme registered provider revealing their new status as a Disco Dating Ambassador for Broken Hill.
The Speed Mate Disco was a test event staff at Empowered Champions held at the organisation’s monthly social meetup.
The event mimicked the soon-to-come Disco Dating events, which are facilitated through Melbourne-based organisation of the same name aiming to offer all abilities speed dating and friend-making programs that include music and dance.
Empowered Champions director Rebecca Blundell said the ‘practise’ event in their existing social meetup went well and that she looks forward to hosting more events this year.
”We went to an expo in Melbourne a few months ago and connected with an organisation there called Disco Dating,” she said.
“It’s something that I’ve wanted to do for the past couple of years in town because people with a disability or NDIS participants, there’s really nothing for them to provide guidance on dating or building relationships and friendships.
“A lot of the clients voice to us that they want a boyfriend or a girlfriend, and we have our support systems but I guess it’s not really tailored for that specifically or helping them to answer ‘do you want to find a friend, a companion, a boyfriend, a girlfriend?’
“That’s something we want to bring to Broken Hill, so we thought we’d soft launch it with our own social meet-up just to see how it landed and it went really, really well.”
The Speed Mate Disco included music, snacks and conversation prompts on tables that aimed to make new social connections easier.
“The event definitely put our own participants in a situation to talk to participants they wouldn’t normally; because they have their own friends or might only feel comfortable talking to boys or girls,” Ms Blundell said.
“Everyone did the whole round of ‘speed dating’ and spoke to everyone.
“We found an hour is a good timeframe regarding attention span and focus and then everyone just spent the rest of the time like singing, dancing and having snacks.”
