Ensuring People with Disabilities to Have Equality

RespectAbility Team Focuses on Keys to Success

Dear Friends,

I cannot thank you enough for your earlier support! I’d like to update you on key progress for people with disabilities that YOU helped make possible! Keep in mind that fighting stigmas and advancing opportunities is not an overnight project. Still, major foundations are being laid. Since May we have achieved the following:

Started building Communities of Practice in Hollywood and Long Beach. We aim to decrease stigma by organizing Communities of Practice in Long Beach, CA and in Hollywood. These communities involve stakeholders who care about people with disabilities (PwDs) – workforce organizations, employers, philanthropists, the media, Hollywood, the faith community, the healthcare industry and more. Working together, communities will work towards supporting PwDs in their local areas by increasing employment opportunities and access to opportunity and by decreasing stigma in the workforce and entertainment industry. The next series of events in California happened in August. One event focused on increasing education, skills, jobs and good health for youth with disabilities in Long Beach. The other events – a focus group in Los Angeles and event at an important TV studio - focused on changing the narrative in Hollywood so that it will be much more diverse and inclusive of diverse people with disabilities.

Raised public awareness of the abilities of people with disabilities (PwDs) through earned and paid media and constant promotion of positive images and stories that counter negative stereotypes. Our work includes identification of messaging and images that change perceptions, publication of articles and op-eds in national and local newspapers by well-known thought-leaders. We also championed A&E’s reality show Born this Way, which won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Unstructured Reality Series, and provided educational toolkits on key disability topics. This is the first time ever that a series starring a cast with disabilities has won an Emmy Award. The show recently finished its third season, began global syndication and is currently nominated for six Emmy Awards. RespectAbility has been involved in this show since the beginning, and a key part of it is to showcase people with disabilities who are in competitive integrated employment or who are becoming successful entrepreneurs. Indeed, we were on an episode this past season! Beyond Born This Way, RespectAbility held an event on Capitol Hill in July about fighting stigmas and advancing opportunities for PwDs, especially through the entertainment industry. Speakers included Casting Director and Producer Leah Daniels-Butler, Golfer Tommy Morrissey and Television Host Marc Summers. This event was shown live on CSPAN nationally. They liked it so much that they re-aired it three more times!

Expansion of our National Leadership Program to bring in more talented young leaders into the disability space. This program is for people with and without disabilities who are interested in careers in public policy, communications, media, faith-based inclusion, fundraising and the nonprofit sector. Since being founded in 2013, RespectAbility has had several dozen fellows go into employment and higher education. This summer, we had 15 amazing young leaders in the fellowship, which was the largest cohort we’ve ever had. Fellows heard from more than 45 speakers who are active in disability, policy, communications, philanthropy, the faith community and more. The fellows’ work included researching potential partnerships and donor prospects, interviewing employers and foundations, managing social media, writing memos and blog posts, translating disability resources into Spanish, prepping for our summer events, educating staffers on Capitol Hill and more. Speakers included Photographer Rick Guidotti, Pollster Celinda Lake, AEI Fellow Gerard Robinson, and Journalists Eleanor Clift and Cal Thomas. Representatives from major foundations – such as Annie E. Casey, Joyce, Bill & Melinda Gates, Ford, JPMorgan Chase, Mitsubishi Electric America and Meyer – and philanthropists like David Trone and Ami Aronson spoke with our summer cohort as well. We will have ten fellows in the fall.

Gained traction in terms of encouraging major philanthropists to think about adding disability to their work. With our encouragement and involvement and that of others, Darren Walker, the president of the Ford Foundation, is making sweeping and very positive changes to include disability in their work. The news made it into the Chronicle of Philanthropy earlier this year. It is one of the first major anti-poverty foundations to think about disability. The breakthrough of the Ford Foundation has inspired other philanthropists to start connecting disability to their existing portfolios. So far this summer, we have interviewed four major foundations about their program areas, diversity initiatives and disability work. Even though these foundations do not focus explicitly on disability issues, we hope they will start thinking about how the disability community already overlaps with their issue areas. This fall or winter, RespectAbility will write a report on how foundations view disability and provide resources on how to include disability in their work.

We elected a fantastic new chair, Calvin Harris, added several new board members (https://www.respectability.org/about-us/meet-our-boards-of-directors-and-advisors/) and hosted a board meeting in July. Additionally, we continued to learn about the importance of diversity within the disability community, such as from a presentation from Floyd Mills at Council on Foundations. We are hard at work continuing and expanding our projects. However, it is worth noting that RespectAbility still is hampered by the fact that we are understaffed and under-resourced. We are eagerly reaching out to make new relationships with potential funders. We are deeply grateful for your earlier investment in our work. Please email me at jenniferm@respectability.org with any questions or comments that you may have. Thanks for your investment in our work – and for the other amazing work you are doing on so many fronts!

I hope that you will continue to invest in the ground-breaking work. Thank you for joining with us in creating a better future for people with disabilities!

Links:

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