Warm weather, barbecues, playing in the local rivers and lakes, hiking, biking and launching a new way to build community!
In July, the portion of Community Connections Inc. that provides services for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities to live, work and play in Southwest Colorado will separate into a new nonprofit organization. This organization is called Our Own Lives.
What does Our Own Lives mean? It is short for a phrase common in disability advocacy: “We are all experts in our own lives.” This phrase sums up the core values of our new organization – respecting that people with disabilities themselves are the ones who know best how to live thriving, happy and fulfilling lives with a disability. Too often, people with disabilities have met the presumption that “other people know better” and have encountered expectations that to receive support, they must surrender their right to make decisions and control over their lives.
As a core value, Our Own Lives affirms that people are in charge of their services and make the ultimate decisions about what support they receive, why they need that support and how the support is provided. We also embody the belief that people with disabilities are the most important voice in determining how organizations that serve their community operate.
In creating and preparing to launch Our Own Lives, we included people with IDD currently getting services from Community Connections at all levels of decision-making, and that inclusion put us on a fundamentally different path than the typical disability service agency.
One of the first bits of critical feedback we received is that disability services too often center the wrong people. Language used by service providers to talk about themselves often focuses on things like the staff and the facilities, and seldom addresses the experience of the actual people hiring the organization for services – the people with disabilities experiencing the services are often treated as passive participants who serve only as consumers of services.
Out of these planning meetings and focus groups another challenge was given to the organization. Our Own Lives was pushed to go beyond providing quality services. We are tasked with building up and empowering the disability community to build each other up from within, sharing their expertise and knowledge, and to support people with IDD to take leadership roles in our organization and in the broader community.
On that front, we are not waiting for July to begin these shifts. The Our Own Lives team includes people with disabilities, including IDD, at all levels of the organization and leadership. We are actively hiring people with IDD to serve as mentors to the next generation of people with disabilities to meet their own successes in community living and employment. We are supporting people to create activities and events that match their passions, including art exhibitions and a community garden.
We are planting the seeds for people with disabilities to lead and change their world and are excited to see all of the ways we expect the local disability community to thrive over the coming years!
Jeff Newman is vice president of Strategic Operations for Our Own Lives.
