Khmer Parent Association

Long Beach, Calif. – The Khmer Parent Association (KPA) is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization, which serves the community of Long Beach, California. The mission is to “produce tomorrow’s leaders of today’s Khmer youth through education.” The organization serves approximately 1,000 people a year including youths, adults and the elderly. KPA has a prominent role in the community because of its commitment to support children with education services and residents with cultural awareness and health education.

History of KPA

After throwing a small party to celebrate high school graduates in the Long Beach community, Chad Hopson founded the KPA in 1995. In 1994, when Hopson’s oldest son graduated with high honors in high school, Hopson and her family attended the graduation ceremony to showcase their happiness and support for her son. However, Hopson “felt so bad” when she recognized graduates she knew, and did not see their parents in the audience. Therefore, she decided to throw a party for all of the graduates to celebrate their success.

After the positive response to the party, which encouraged graduates to continue to strive for their goals and success, a guidance counselor who worked closely with the school district pulled Hopson aside. The guidance counselor wanted to work with Hopson, because she believed Hopson could reach students. The guidance counselor explained that there was a high rate of high school drop outs at the time, and parents did not “know what to do to help their children the way you do, so you need to do something.”

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Lessons from multihyphenate Geoffrey Melada

Geoffrey Melada with RespectAbility Fellows and Staff

Rockville, Md., Sept. 18 – Geoffrey Melada is an outgoing and demonstrative man, a personality that has no doubt served him well as he moved from courtrooms to newsrooms during a diverse career as a journalist, trial lawyer and now communications director for Hillel International.

Geoffrey Melada speaking to RespectAbility Fellows

As he entered the room, you could see his face light up and his excitement to be speaking in front of a group of interested young advocates, mixing advice and anecdotes in his hour-long talk.

Like many of the speakers RespectAbility featured this summer, Melada has not had a ‘traditional’ career journey. However, his winding career path taught him many lessons along the way, and he argued that the fellows shouldn’t accept the conventional wisdom that there is only one path to a profession.

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A Conversation on Building a Board with Debbie Ratner Salzberg

Debbie Ratner Salzberg with RespectAbility Fellows and Staff

Rockville, Md., Sept. 18 – Debbie Ratner Salzberg has a sincerity that shines, and she starts the conversation by encouraging the RespectAbility Fellows to ask questions and participate in the discussion. She adds color to the conversation and engages us with her experiences in development and community building.

Debbie Ratner Salzberg speaking to RespectAbility Fellows

As past chair and current board member with the DCJCC, Ratner Salzberg envisions a community within the Washington, D.C., area where Jews and non-Jews can meet, socialize and help each other and the community. This is accomplished through community service planning, a theater company, a gym, educational classes and children’s programming, as well as welcome parties and family events.

“The DCJCC was trying to touch all parts of the community, and that was exciting for me because it was what I was looking for when I first arrived in DC,” she said.

Ratner Salzberg says that she watched this organization grow out of a small classroom in a synagogue and that the work that DCJCC is doing is something that she is very proud of.

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Learning from K Street Coaching’s Gideon Culman

Gideon Culman with RespectAbility Fellows and Staff

Rockville, Md., Sept. 18 – Gideon Culman runs and operates K Street Coaching®, an executive coaching firm that supports business, government and nonprofit sector leaders as they weave their ingenuity and influence into a visionary legacy. Basically, Culman helps people get to where they want to go in their careers.

Gideon Culman speaking to RespectAbility Fellows

Culman’s discussion with all of the RespectAbility Fellows was similar to his coaching sessions with business and government executives. As a group, we began by making a list of the things we need to succeed.

The list contained some of these words: goals, vision, determination, patience, planning, support, guidance and passion.

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Authentic Disability Representation Necessary to Ensure Largest Minority is Included

Los Angeles, Calif., Sept. 15 – As Hollywood celebrates Emmy season last weekend and this weekend, it’s important to highlight the several nominees with disabilities. In contrast to the Academy Awards earlier this year, no known actor with a disability was nominated for an Oscar. Including authentic disability in the diversity conversation is important to ensure that Hollywood does not leaves out the largest minority in the U.S.

Creative Arts Emmy Awards

Last weekend during the Creative Arts Emmy Awards presentation at the Microsoft Theater, several nominations were for individuals with a disability or for a show with a disability theme.

Streaming service Netflix came out with a hit new show – Stranger Things. The series was nominated for multiple awards this year, including “Outstanding Drama Series,” “Outstanding Supporting Actress” and “Outstanding Supporting Actor.” Actor Gaten Matarazzo, who plays Dustin in the series, has cleidocranial dysplasia. The genetic disorder affects the development of a person’s bones and teeth.

In documentaries, Sam Neill, narrator of Wild New Zealand and Emmy nominee for “Outstanding Narrator,” had a speech impediment as a child.

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Rockville, Md., Sept. 13 – Jose Plaza, current manager of The California Endowment and a former associate board member of the Washington, D.C., Latin American Youth Center, spoke with RespectAbility Fellows and Staff about his passion for the inclusion of people with disabilities in his work.

The California Endowment supports many of the core values that RespectAbility advocates for: bringing awareness to conducive, diverse populations such as people with disabilities and supporting the efforts in giving them equal opportunities to thrive. With the focus on underserved communities, Jose Plaza and The California Endowment have worked on finding the effective tools necessary for change.

“We need to ensure that we are all there for each other,” Plaza said. “We need to rise up as one.” With Plaza’s credence to find intersectionality across all communities, he uses his Hispanic background and former experiences to “celebrate diversity” across all borders. [continue reading…]

Learning from The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Patrick McCarthy

Patrick McCarthy with RespectAbility Fellows and Staff

Rockville, Md., Sept. 13 – Do you remember playing with a kaleidoscope when you were a child? Or even recently? How about the excitement as the image changes and you gain a new perspective?

Patrick McCarthy speaking to RespectAbility Fellows

Patrick McCarthy, the CEO and President of The Annie E. Casey Foundation, brought RespectAbility Fellows and staff back to their childhoods. McCarthy reminded Fellows that the image changes as you turn it.

“It is all about how you use it and how you see it,” he said.

The ‘Kaleidoscope Perspective’ has played a significant role in how McCarthy guides The Annie E. Casey Foundation.

The Baltimore-based foundation is one of the largest in the United States, giving away more than $99 million dollars in 2015. As the website states, the foundation focuses on “strengthening families, building stronger communities, and ensuring access to opportunity, because children need all three to succeed.”

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Learning from Nancy Bocskor

Nancy Bocskor with RespectAbility Fellows and Staff

Rockville, Md., Sept. 12 – When I applied to be a Development Fellow for RespectAbility, I was under the impression that development was a synonym (and a more sophisticated name) for fundraising. But throughout the Fellowship, I have enjoyed learning about the nuances of development, specifically the intensely personal form that it often takes and the unique role of storytelling.

While speaking to the summer cohort of RespectAbility Fellows, Nancy Bocskor punctuated each bit of development advice with a story, weaved from personal experience and an appreciation for the connection that storytelling can create.

Bocskor, tagged a “Democracy Coach” by a major German newspaper, teaches citizens in the United States and internationally how to communicate with passion to affect change in their communities. She has raised money for more than 100 Members of Congress and candidates, trained activists and leaders in all 50 states and 26 countries and helped non-profits craft a story that resonates with donors and volunteers. Her areas of expertise include presentation skills, speech coaching, fundraising, grassroots advocacy and women’s leadership training.

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Born This Way Takes Home Two More Emmy’s for Cinematography and First-Ever Emmy for Casting

Born This Way’s John Tucker and Rachel Osterbach back stage after they presented awards in three categories at the Emmy’s Creative Arts Awards.

Los Angeles, Calif., Sept. 11 – A&E Network’s critically acclaimed and award-winning original docuseries Born This Way’s honors keep adding up – showing that disability is a winning theme. This series starring a cast with disabilities, which received six Emmy nominations this year, won two Emmy’s at Saturday night’s Creative Arts Emmy Awards for Casting for a Reality Program and Cinematography for a Reality Program – after bringing home the Emmy for Outstanding Unstructured Reality Series in 2016.

Produced by Bunim/Murray Productions, Born This Way, an unscripted reality show on A&E, follows a group of seven young adults with Down syndrome along with their family and friends in Southern California. Because its focus is on showing their everyday lives, including employment, efforts for independent housing, loves and more, Born this Way breaks down stigmas surrounding disability.

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