pages: CommissiononPersonswithDisabilities/2017-04-12.pdf, 10
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CommissiononPersonswithDisabilities | 2017-04-12 | 10 | ITEM 2-B COMMISSION ON DISABILITY ISSUES MEETING MINUTES OF Wednesday, April 12, 2017 6:30 p.m. him and help him get in and out of his house so he doesn't fall. Stuart James: This is one of our great programs, because every consumer that comes in is a success story. And I don't know if you guys know, are familiar with Easy Does It? It's a service provider. You guys familiar with it? We just did a home, we put a lift in for a home of a woman that was not able to get in and out of her house. Easy Does It had been going there to carry her out. And we now just put her lift in, so she can get in and out on her own. And this is also part of diversion. This is actually making it SO you don't have to go into an institution. Beth Kenny: This is Judith Heumann. Part of my trying to bring in people who are very successful in the disability community, the young lady to the right. So there's two people here, Michaela; one is Judy Heumann, and the other is Haben Girma. I don't know if you know who Haben Girma is. Haben Girma is the first deaf-blind graduate from Harvard Law. She is Fortune magazine's 30 Under 30. She now lives here in the Bay Area. Particularly timely is that her mother is a refugee and came to America on the refugee program with her and her brother, who's also deaf-blind. And she has spoken for Obama. She's one of the most influential woman of Africa, awards from the British government, and she's very heavily involved in CIL now. So she comes in and does speeches for us to kids, and I'm actually trying to recruit her to our board. That's a work in progress. Stuart James: So we bring them in, and we get them to start to inspire kids to think differently about their futures. That's my travel training team in Napa goofing off. So there's a whole bunch of people there, Michaela, in pink shirts that say: "Beer Or Normal." And they're not working very hard, and they're probably drunk [laughter] But, anyway. And that's it. Thanks to Senator Loni Hancock, we got Non-profit of the Year, last year, for our changes. We are very excited to be part of Alameda. And I am always open to, and would very much like to hear from, the Commission at any time about things that we need to be doing to help support the community. These are just things that we've acquired through my two years here. But you guys know better than I do about what some of the challenges are, particularly related to Alameda, and what role CIL can play in helping you address those things. Stuart James: We are about to make a very big push to the business sector in Alameda thanks to the Chamber of Commerce, who've been very supportive. Mayor Spencer has been very supportive since I got here. So we are happy to have her on board. We will be having our opening ceremony on June 24th. We'll be partnering with BORP, the Bay Area Recreation Program, and as part of our opening ceremony, we'll be doing a bike ride around Alameda. And we'll have all sorts of hand cycles, and regular bikes, and anybody can come down. And there'll be some food, and all that kind of thing. Stuart James: As I was speaking to Beth earlier, we're going to see if we can get a float in the parade, which I need to talk to you about. [laughter] My staff's got all sorts of great ideas about a float that they'd like to do for the parade. We were about to make a very big push in Alameda. We fundamentally changed the way this CIL addresses the problem of disabilities. There's been challenges in Berkeley of trying to do that. The Berkeley disability community's very entrenched in a 40-year-old conversation that hasn't changed. It's no offense to the Berkeley community because that's our roots, but Alameda is giving us an opportunity to paint a new picture, and to sort of push some of these programs. One of the things we're really desperately trying to do, and we've not been very successful, is having a better relationship with the College of Alameda. We've actually been trying to rent facilities from them, and we can't get a call back. Yes, even from the number that says, "If you want 05/24/17 Page 10 of 29 | CommissiononPersonswithDisabilities/2017-04-12.pdf |