Young Adults Conference 2012 - HDA England & Wales

This March, the HDA in England and Wales held their 4th annual young adult HD conference in Telford, England. Once again it was a sell-out success, with around 40 young people between the ages of 18-35 all merging on Telford for the weekend.

The Saturday began with the traditional ice breaker, which involved moving around the room depending on what answer you thought of for the questions being given out. This, followed by a lovely lunch, gave all the young people a chance to get to know each other and socialise. After lunch we got down to business and the first speaker was HDYO's very own German translator, Michaela Grein, who had come all the way from Germany and was brave enough to share her personal HD story with the audience. Michaela was fantastic!

Michaela's talk was followed by speeches from HDBuzz's Ed Wild and Caroline Knight as well as the always popular open discussion groups on testing, caring, having children, research and many more topics that young people could attend. While in the evening, everyone enjoyed a 3 course meal, a quiz and plenty of time in the bar.

Sunday morning contained talks from Ed Wild (again), Hannah Longworth and Becky Davis from the HDA, and lastly Matt Ellison who gave a talk about HDYO. By lunchtime it was time to say goodbye once again as everybody went their separate ways after another fantastic weekend.

This conference always provides a great opportunity for young people to not only receive good information about HD, but to make friends and connections within the HD community. I believe everyone is already looking forward to next year!