RespectAbility’s Chanukkah celebration this year was one to remember. We had a wonderful celebration for community building, Chanukkah lessons, values, and celebrating some of the awesome speakers in RespectAbility’s Disability Training & Speakers Bureau.

RespectAbility held candle lighting events during seven of the nights of Chanukkah. Given the virtual nature of the events, we did not hold one on Shabbat. At a time when we had not seen our RespectAbility family and many of our loved ones for a while, this was an opportunity to bring people together. It felt like a miracle that we were able to spend Chanukkah together. It was a time to celebrate the holidays virtually and safely, as many office and community holiday parties have been cancelled this year. [continue reading…]

Carly Okyle

I couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of the situation I was in. There I was on a beautiful spring day, with sunlight streaming through the windows and birds chirping outside, reading “Grover’s Eight Nights of Light” to my (at the time) 10-month-old son Phoenix. He’d been obsessed with this book for weeks, and when he occasionally wanted to hear a different story, his go-to was “Elmo’s Little Dreidel,” despite it being just as seasonally inappropriate.

I used to love reading, so much so that I’d get reprimanded by my parents for having my reading light on well past midnight when I had school the next day. Now that my personal free time has been taken over by my son, I get joy from reading with him. I revel in the bliss of holding him close on my lap as we turn pages, and I match his excitement as he points to familiar objects and characters in the pictures. Still, I wondered if I should try to steer him toward more secular books – or at least toward stories that don’t specifically reference the winter season when we were days away from Memorial Day. [continue reading…]

Aria Mia Lobreti as self in All the Light We Cannot See. Cr. Ryan Collerd/Netflix © 2021

Los Angeles, Dec. 9 – Following a a worldwide search for blind and low vision actresses, Aria Mia Loberti will make her acting debut in the bestselling Pulitzer Prize winning adaptation of “All the Light We Cannot See.”

Loberti will play Marie-Laure, a blind teenager, whose path collides with Werner, a German soldier, as they both try to survive the devastation of World War II in occupied France. While she has no formal acting training, she beat out thousands of submissions.

She also is an advocate for people with disabilities, especially those who, like she, are blind or low-vision. These efforts have taken her from her small Rhode Island hometown to global forums like the United Nations, UN Women, TEDx, the Thomson Reuters Foundation, and beyond. [continue reading…]

Los Angeles, Dec. 9 – Zeno Mountain Farm continues to welcome honors following the production of award-winning feature film Best Summer Ever, an inclusive musical featuring eight original songs and a fully-integrated cast and crew of people with and without disabilities. At the 2021 Media Access Awards last month, Zeno Mountain Farm won the SAG – AFTRA Disability Awareness Award, an annual award presented to an individual or organization for their work advancing the public awareness of the vast potential of disabled Americans.

The Media Access Awards honors people in the film and television industries who are advancing the accurate portrayals and employment of people with disabilities. This annual show, done in partnership with Easterseals Disability Services, honors entertainment industry professionals who have advanced authentic disability-related narratives and employment in fields of writing, producing, casting, performance, and directing. [continue reading…]

Los Angeles, CA, December 6 – RespectAbility is excited to announce that starting in January 2022, 15 Apprentices in its National Leadership Program will be paid $15 an hour while they upskill for careers that will improve the lives of other people with disabilities. The National Leadership Program trains leaders who are committed to disability issues and plan to go into careers in public policy, advocacy, communications, diversity, equity and inclusion, fundraising, nonprofit management or faith-based inclusion. The “Earn While You Learn” program enables participants to gain skills and contacts while making a positive difference for people with disabilities.

This program is done virtually and is fully accessible for people with disabilities. It offers full-time job coaching, skills development, networking opportunities and assistive technology. Apprentices are expected to commit to at least 20 hours of work per week, and to participate in regularly scheduled team meetings and guest speaker sessions. Apprentices will work with the National Leadership Program Director to advance their career goals, including working on resumes and cover letters, practicing for interviews, and building up their professional network. [continue reading…]

Los Angeles, CA, December 3 – RespectAbility, in partnership with the Fox Family Foundation, is offering 5 paid apprenticeships for dedicated leaders with blindness or low vision. This “earn while you learn” program is for people who are planning to work in careers in public policy, nonprofit management, civic engagement, or other areas that will create a better future for people with blindness, low vision and/or other disabilities. [continue reading…]

Grant will be leveraged to achieve goals of new strategic plan

Los Angeles, December 2 – RespectAbility, a diverse disability-led nonprofit organization that fights stigmas and advances opportunities so all people with disabilities can fully participate in every aspect of community, is thrilled to announce a $1 million dollar donation from the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation. The funds will be leveraged through an existing 1-1 matching campaign to enable RespectAbility to achieve the paradigm-shifting goals of its new strategic plan. The plan is a bold, forward-looking, and visionary five-year roadmap to shatter old paradigms by engaging in a multifaceted approach to remove physical, programmatic, and attitudinal barriers to full societal participation by people with all types of disabilities.

“As we look to the future to envision the full scope of what is truly possible for people with disabilities, we are deeply grateful to the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation for its $1 million dollar investment, which will enable us to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow,” said Ollie Cantos, the recently-elected Chairman of RespectAbility’s Board of Directors. Cantos, who is blind himself, is a civil rights attorney who shared recognition as ABC News Persons of the Week with his adopted triplets who also are blind when they broke barriers by becoming Eagle Scouts. “When philanthropy, individuals, organizations, private sector companies, and government agencies at all levels come together to achieve concrete and measurable outcomes that truly matter, everyone benefits.” [continue reading…]

Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi

Washington, D.C., December 2 – RespectAbility Founder and CEO Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, a serial social-impact entrepreneur who is a pioneer in the area of disability advocacy and impactful leadership, announced publicly today she will transition from the organization she co-founded. The hope is to identify her successor by early 2022, with Mizrahi staying up until June 2022 to support a successful transition.

Mizrahi officially informed RespectAbility’s Board of Directors in July, and the board convened a search committee co-chaired by RespectAbility’s Vice-Chair Randall Duchesneau and Treasurer Linda Burger. On the committee’s recommendation, the Board hired David Hinsley Cheng of DHC Search to launch a nationwide search for Mizrahi’s successor.

RespectAbility is a diverse, disability-led nonprofit that works to create systemic change in how society views and values people with disabilities, and advances policies and practices that empower people with disabilities to have a better future. RespectAbility shifts narratives and creates progress by centering people with lived disability experience in leadership roles, ensuring authentic representation in entertainment and news media, advancing successful public policy, and pushing for faith-based and other inclusion. [continue reading…]

Lauren Appelbaum

Los Angeles, Nov. 24 – In March 2018 I was diagnosed with Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy (RSD), now classified as Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS), which is a form of chronic pain that usually affects an arm or a leg. With just 200,000 people in the U.S. diagnosed with CRPS in the U.S., most people have not heard of CRPS, which is classified as a “rare disease” with no cure. Therefore, the month of November is CRPS Awareness month.

Since acquiring this disability, I have had the privilege of creating pipeline programming for nearly 100 other disabled individuals. During the 2021 RespectAbility Entertainment Lab for Disabled Entertainment Professionals, we were pleased to have award-winning independent film director and editor Jennifer Valdes as one of 30 Lab Fellows. Like me, Valdes is living with CRPS.

“I used to feel that living life with complex regional pain syndrome wasn’t a life worth living,” she said. “I devalued myself as a human. I felt ashamed of my disability. Disclosing it felt like I was revealing a big secret. I felt isolated and alone. Living with a disability is not the life I planned for, but It’s the only one that I have.” [continue reading…]