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Zdenka Petrovic, Self-advocate

My name is Zdenka Petrovic and I was born on June 30th, 1965 in Zagreb, Croatia. My mother abandoned me immediately after my birth, and I was placed in an institution for abandoned children. When I was little, I spent some time with a foster family to which I became much attached.

In 1974, I was placed in an institution for people with disabilities in Visegrad, Bosnia and Herzegovina. All the contacts with my foster family were interrupted. The years spent in the institution were very hard for me. I wanted to go to school but I was not given a chance in the institution. I had to work in the workshops, instead. Sometimes I worked outside of the institution, but I had to give all the earned money to the staff. The few things that I owned were taken away from me. I didn’t have any possibility to go out of the institution, or to influence the course of my life in any way.

With the beginning of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992), I was transferred to an institution for people with disabilities in Sibenik, Croatia. Living conditions in this institution weren’t any better.

I was deinstitutionalized and included in the program of Community-Based Supported Housing of the Association for Promoting Inclusion in 1998. After many years I finally returned to the city where I was born.

Today I am an independent person. I work and make decisions about my life. I use every occasion to promote my views against institutionalization because I feel responsible for those people that still live in institutions.
The Association for Self Advocacy (ASA) was established in October 2003 as the first Croatian NGO founded and led by people with intellectual disabilities. Work in association makes me proud and happy. I can freely express my opinion and participate in the struggle for the equalization of rights of people with intellectual disabilities. As the president of ASA, I try to play an active roll in the promotion of human rights of people with disabilities.

In May 2006 I was elected as a member of the Steering Group Comitee of the European Platform of Self-Advocates (EPSA). Since November 2006 I reprensent European self-advocates at the council of Inclusion International