About us

What is Get Yourself Active?

Get Yourself Active is a programme run by the leading national user-led pan-disability charity Disability Rights UK. Since we began in 2015, we have worked tirelessly to increase Disabled people’s participation in sport and physical activity so that everyone can experience its benefits.

We want to break down barriers so that every Disabled person can find ways to get active in their local area in a way that is right for them. Disabled people have a right to get active, and we want everyone to have the chance to feel good and have fun wherever they are.

Theory of Change

Everyone has the right to get active and feel the benefits of sport and physical activity in ways that suit them. We know that if the barriers to participation are broken down, more Disabled people will get active. It’s that simple.

What we do

• Build capacity amongst Disabled Peoples Organisation (DPOs) to provide and support physical activity locally, for example through financial modelling and impact planning
• Upskilling the social work and social care workforce around physical activity and it’s benefits, so that they can better support Disabled people to be active
• Working with the sport sector to embed co-production in practice, ensuring that the sector are working in partnership with Disabled people in the design and delivery of physical activity
• Providing information to Disabled people on ways to get active at home and in the community
• Developing policy that has impact at a national level

Meet the team

Laura Horton, Programme Manager

Laura has worked in the Voluntary and Community Sector since the age of 14, as well as being an FE Teacher. Laura has held various roles, from volunteer to Trustee, Chair of Governors, drama lead and CEO for a disability charity, LCiL. All of her roles have been embedded within the field of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. She is incredibly passionate about ensuring that all people are treated with respect and dignity and given equity to live the life they wish with full control. 

Working in this sector provides so many opportunities to work with a wide range of people and to make a real difference, providing opportunities to engage meaningfully and make real change. Laura is always looking at ways to ensure that people live and operate in a just society, tackling injustice by taking a rights-based approach.

Working for Disability Rights UK (DR UK) allows Laura to draw upon her years of working experience and her lived experience as a Disabled woman. She loves working with like-minded people who share the same ethos and have Disabled people and their rights at the centre of everything they do.

Laura likes to stay active, and home workouts and walking are her usual go-to activities. She enjoys cooking, especially for her family and friends, and loves to travel. However, if you want to catch her when she’s not working you will usually find her at a gig or festival.

Lydia Bone, Co-production Lead

Liddie joined Disability Rights UK in 2019, after previously qualifying as a social worker and working in a variety of roles within the voluntary sector. Liddie works as our ‘Co-production Lead’, leading on embedding co-production within our organisation, as well as working on our co-production projects as part of Get Yourself Active. Liddie is passionate about her work and believes that communities, and individuals that use services, should be included and their voices should be heard by organisations. ‘Nothing about us without us’.

In her spare time, Liddie can be found baking or spending time with her family – keeping active by running after her toddler!

Amarjit Randhawa, Moving Social Work Programme Manager

Amarjit joined Disability Rights UK as the Moving Social Work Programme Manager. Amarjit is a qualified Social Worker, having worked in various roles within Local Authorities, progressing overtime to more senior positions. She has considered this to be a rewarding career and a true privilege to meet, learn and work within diverse communities.

Amarjit joined Disability Rights UK to work on the Moving Social Work programme and work towards wider systemic change as opposed to change at a local, individualised level.

She is passionate about social justice, advocating and supporting for change. In her free time, Amarjit enjoys socialising and prioritises quality time with her family.

Elliot Watson, Project Co-ordinator

Elliot has been working with Disability Rights UK since joining as a volunteer in January 2020, where he assisted with running DR UK’s shop. He has since joined the Get Yourself Active Programme, where he helped deliver the Together Fund before moving into his co-ordinator role, where he now supports several projects. Supporting Disabled people to become more physically active is an area Elliot is passionate about due to his personal experiences.

Elliot is a Disabled person himself and has 19 years of lived experience. He has had four spinal operations to remove a tumour and drain a cyst from inside his spinal cord, affecting how he walks. He had his first operation when he was 11 back in 2005, and his most recent one in 2013, and he needed stoma surgery in 2017. As a result of his own experiences and the barriers he has faced, he was inspired to move into the charity sector to help support Disabled people.

He is a lover of the sea and graduated from the University of Plymouth with a BSc (Hons) Oceanography and Coastal Processes degree. He enjoys going sea fishing and sailing in his free time.

Sonja Randhawa, Data & Insight Officer

Sonja joined Disability Rights UK (DR UK) as the inaugural Data and Insight Officer in January 2024. Sonja has recently returned from New Zealand after 10 years where she enjoyed a career in both the banking and the utilities industries. Sonja has more than 7 years’ experience in advancing digital channels including chatbot and social media. Sonja’s role at DR UK is to help the organisation begin on their journey to become a data driven organisation, this includes supporting the data needs for GYA.

Sonja spent four years as a gender advocate at a local and national level in New Zealand. Her volunteering and professional background inspired her MBA research project; “To what extent do chatbots powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) have a gender bias? A case study of New Zealand chatbots.” Sonja also served as the President of the Postgraduate Students’ Association (PGSA) at Victoria University of Wellington. In addition to graduating with her MBA, Sonja has a BA (Hons) History and is midway through a Master of Political Science.

As a disabled woman of colour, Sonja is passionate about bias in technology, community engagement, disability rights and racial justice. She is motivated in bringing diversity and equity to the decision-making table and making pathways for those with less privilege.