AsIAm is Ireland’s National Autism Charity. We are working to create a society in which every autistic person is empowered to reach their own personal potential and fully participate in society. We believe that by developing the capacity of the autism community and addressing the societal barriers to inclusion we can make Ireland the world’s most autism-friendly country.

What began, in 2014, as an online platform for the community to access information and share experiences has quickly grown into a movement for change for the autism community. Today, AsIAm is Ireland’s most influential autism charity with a team of 21 staff, half of whom are themselves autistic,

What we do:

The organisation has received significant press coverage and numerous awards for its work and has a large footprint across the country. During our first five years we have developed a series of innovative supports for the autism community. As well as providing vital information and advocacy supports to the  community, we have developed a number of nationally and internationally unique training and accreditation programmes for organisations to become autism-friendly. As a whole of life organisation we have a range of no less than 15 programmes and projects aimed at supporting the autism community. Whilst these projects are diverse they can all be understood under three key headings:

Support & Capacity Building: Our range of projects aimed at supporting autistic people directly include a full-time signposting service, monthly information events held regionally through our Community Support events, ongoing policy and advocacy work and innovative projects aimed at upskilling autistic people to be their agents of change.

Education & Training: In order for society to fully include autistic people, it is necessary to mainstream knowledge of the condition. A peer in school may need to know how to effectively communicate with an autistic person whilst a doctor may need to understand how to effectively treat a patient who is on the autism spectrum. We provide a suite of training targeting a wide array of people and professionals. This includes the TeachMeAsIAm Programmes – Ireland’s first autism training programme for early years practitioners and our new Autism-Friendly Schools Toolkit and online training programme for teachers. This continues into third level with our globally-unique Autism-Friendly University Award. DCU was recognised as the world’s first such University last year and we are now supporting six further universities across Ireland in reaching our standard and are engaging internationally to help other countries achieve the same.