The Americans with Disabilities Act requires that all employers, including government entities, faith-based organizations, and employers in both the public and private sector, provide reasonable accommodations in the workplace. Offering and asking for accommodations can be complex. It can be hard for some people to ask for accommodations. It can also be hard to receive [click to continue...]
I always had a goal of working in the disability space but was never quite sure how I was going to achieve it. One night, in December of 2014, I was in my bed contemplating all the things that I desired to do to make an impact in the world around disability. I wanted to [click to continue...]
Discovering that I live with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) was a relief! Managing the lives of three kids in three different schools who were involved in different outside of school activities, learning to navigate the special education system and advocacy, and working full time in an outside sales job created such chaos! Trying to [click to continue...]
“Lessons on accessibility – or any kind of advocacy or awareness – can and should never be relegated to just one ‘special’ month. But it’s never too late to start.” Overseeing an organization’s employee newsletter means having almost complete editorial control, which in turn means that you can more or less add in anything you [click to continue...]
by Bill Gaventa, PFTW Project Consultant, and Erik Carter, Vanderbilt Kennedy Center UCEDD How do most of us get our jobs, at least somewhere along our work lives? It is often through personal relationships and networking that we find out about openings. Or, in other words, social capital is often the pathway to work. Congregations are [click to continue...]
If you had asked the Leah Ilana of 2020 where she would be career wise, she likely wouldn’t have guessed learning about grant writing for nonprofits in a hands-on environment. My educational background is in history and my undergraduate internships and employment experiences are in libraries, archives, and museums. After graduating with my bachelor’s, I [click to continue...]
Throughout my research of faith-based organizations that provide services for disability and mental health, a lot of organizations impressed me. I am going to focus on two in particular below. The first organization that stood out to me was the Collaborative on Faith and Disability. Their homepage shares some fascinating statistics, including that 84% of [click to continue...]
“I’ve been working hard to integrate accessibility into St. Luke’s idea of what a Beloved Community looks like—what is a community, after all, without disabled people in its midst?” Ten years ago this fall, on what my therapist at the time pointed out was also Yom Kippur, I stepped foot into St. Luke’s Episcopal Church [click to continue...]
Tzedek DC is an independent public interest center headquartered at the University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law that helps people with problems stemming from debt. Tzedek DC’s official mission is “to safeguard the legal rights and financial health of DC residents with low incomes dealing with the often-devastating consequences of abusive [click to continue...]
What page are we on? How much longer does the service last? Just as my body signaled for urgent rest, the Shofar blasted. “Truah!” Those first notes remind me that I want to be heard by my Jewish community. Not just as someone who’s disabled, but as a Holy Fool who has the knowledge you [click to continue...]
