Archive for year: 2019
The Power of Belonging: A Community Comes Together
By Rachel Baker
Our community of Midland, Michigan, is a community that works hard to create inclusive opportunities for everyone. This past January, The Arc of Midland received a grant to organize and execute our first MLK Day of Service project. With the help of over 175 volunteers, we packaged and delivered food to over 1,000 people on one of the coldest days of the year.
The 175+ volunteers braved the cold to help direct traffic and deliver food. One man, Tom, came to receive food and ended up volunteering the entire day!
“I had no intentions of staying to help, but once I saw everyone working together to help people like me, I had to stay and be a part of giving back to the community that was giving to me.”
The Arc of Midland is lucky to be widely supported by many businesses, clubs, and organizations in our community that pitched in on this effort. The Great Lakes Loons (a local Minor League Baseball team) played host to the chapter’s Day of Service event. Not only does the team provide a safe, accessible, and welcoming environment for everyone to enjoy, but they also employ many people with disabilities throughout the year.
Another crucial partner was Hidden Harvest. Since 2016, we have partnered together through a variety of programs and projects—including a free pantry stocked weekly and supporting the community together when a fire ravaged an apartment complex where many people with disabilities and seniors lived. During this year’s MLK Day event, they provided food assistance, transportation, volunteers, and logistics for packaging of the food.
The Arc of Midland’s MLK Day work brought thousands of people together in service to build a stronger community. Together, every partnering organization, volunteer, and person receiving assistance honored Martin Luther King Jr. and his vision of belonging.
New Videos From The Arc Spotlight Need to Close Institutions, Support Community Living
In 2019, 37 states still have institutions where people with intellectual and developmental (I/DD) live away from their families and communities. Some may recall the horrible investigative reports over the last few decades that showed the terrible conditions in institutions, but many people fail to realize the facilities still exist and that state and federal dollars are still funding them. The Arc of the United States was founded by families trying to eliminate the need for those institutions and to get their family members with disabilities back home and included in their communities. While we have come a long way, there remains much to be done from state capitals to our nation’s capital.
The Arc developed this video to highlight the issue and to educate the general public about institutions, and to urge action to close the remaining institutions and support people with disabilities, no matter their level of need, back into the community.
At The Arc we also understand that it is more important than ever that we educate the general public about why inclusion and acceptance matters and that they join the fight to ensure that the progress that we have made as a disability community is not stalled.
We have to talk about the fact that institutions remain open, and how those dollars would be better spent in the community. We have to educate the general public about how Medicaid makes life in the community possible. We have to protect Medicaid from threats of cuts and caps that would drastically hurt people with I/DD.
To illustrate community living, check out our new video.
On the policy front, we have to talk to state and federal legislators about the fact that the federal Medicaid law that we fought so hard to save just a few years ago needs a face lift. Right now, services in institutions, nursing homes and other more segregated settings are mandatory while home and community-based services (HCBS) are optional under the law.
These are complex issues, but the basic fact remains everybody benefits when people with disabilities are part of the fabric of their communities. That doesn’t come by keeping people locked away in institutions – it comes through conversation, inclusion and acceptance that we are all better together.
The Arc promotes and protects the human rights of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and actively supports their full inclusion and participation in the community throughout their lifetimes.
