Strong Voices

Scientist Dr Whitney Whitford is skilled at finding missing pieces of DNA.

Her complicated version of a jigsaw puzzle involves things called copy number variants (CNVs). They are responsible for the duplications and deletions of genes or parts of genes that cause neurodevelopmental disorders.

As a PhD student at the University of Auckland Whitney developed a filtering and annotation system – called a ‘bioinformatic pipeline’ – to find and track CNVs in individuals with neurodevelopmental conditions.

Awhi Ngā Mātua is a community of parents who Emily Writes wishes she had known in those long nights when she felt alone and overwhelmed with the responsibility of caring for a sick child.

Emily, a mother of two boys living in Wellington, is the author of best-selling parenting books Rants in the Dark and Is it Bedtime Yet? – with another, Needs Adult Supervision, just released.

She is also the Director of the ‘Awhi’ online community.

Tom Russell has just finished a day’s work at the Te Tuhi Training Café in Pakuranga working at the till, taking orders and baking a batch of almond friands.

He loves it. He loves it so much he wants other people with disabilities to come to the café and ask him or the trainers about whether it’s something they would like to do “because it’s a very good opportunity”.

Alannah was being home-schooled in Hanmer Springs during the lockdown. Diksha was in India wondering when she would be able to see her mother in New Zealand.

The two girls started writing to each other – old-fashioned letters between pen pals across 13,000 kilometres. The letters went back and forth between Hanmer and Punjab in north-west India for two years. Then the two girls finally met.