By Gabriella Payne
Berwick teenager Samuel Valavanis lost his vision at a young age, but he’s never let that stop him from accomplishing anything he puts his mind to.
A passionate disability advocate, 18-year-old Samuel is working hard to forge a career in the radio industry so that he can share his own lived experiences of growing up blind and help educate the wider community for the better.
“I like to prove to myself that I can achieve things that other sighted people can do,” Samuel said.
“When people started to find out about my vision impairment, it made me want to be able to self-advocate as they would often misrepresent it.
I want to help spread awareness and the media is a very large scale way to do that,” he explained.
Samuel’s resilience and passion are clear to all those he meets, and for years now he has been inspiring others with his story.
At just 12-weeks-old, Samuel was diagnosed with bilateral retinoblastoma, a form of cancer, and had to undergo surgery to have both of his eyes removed.
Although he has been completely blind for the most part of his life, Samuel said that he never saw his disability as a hindrance and has always been focused on achieving everything he sets his mind to.
“I am not just going to take on the ‘woe is me’ type personality, because there’s plenty of people who do that, and I don’t want to be one of them,” Samuel said.
“I may be blind, but I’m still a human being and I still want to prove myself.”
A driven and ambitious young man, Samuel has already started making strides towards achieving his radio dreams.
Having recently started studying a diploma of audio engineering and sound production at Melbourne’s JMC Academy, Samuel is quickly learning the ropes of the radio industry and thanks to a Vision Australia further education bursary, he’s now got the tools to hone his craft at home.
The bursary provided Samuel with a suite of state-of-the-art audio equipment to help him fine tune his skills, including a Victor Reader Trek, headphones, a voice recorder, a lapel microphone and an iPhone, which will all help make his studies a lot easier.
“I’m now able to do my own recordings and work on my presenting techniques,” Samuel said, adding that he would one day love to present and air his very own radio show.
“I’m very thankful to all the people who kindly donated money to Vision Australia and to me, because without that equipment I don’t know how I’d go in my academic and personal life.”
Samuel said that he hoped he could go on to really make a difference in his career and help change the narrative around disability in the mainstream media, so that other kids with similar experiences wouldn’t feel alone.
“We can do things just as any other person can,” Samuel said.
“So if you’re passionate about something and you really want to make it happen, then do your best and don’t let anything get in your way.”
