pages: CommissiononPersonswithDisabilities/2017-04-12.pdf, 5
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CommissiononPersonswithDisabilities | 2017-04-12 | 5 | ITEM 2-B COMMISSION ON DISABILITY ISSUES MEETING MINUTES OF Wednesday, April 12, 2017 6:30 p.m. Stuart James: We do this with the Alameda kids, the Oakland kids, Albany, Richmond I think has come. We bring them all in. We had 150 kids at the party. We also did another event with them where we took them on a We have a very extensive Travel Training program to teach kids and adults how to use public transportation, and we help map routes for them. Stuart James: As part of that program, the same thing, we invited all these kids, and we did a scavenger hunt around the Bay Area. We give them BART tickets, ferry tickets, bus tickets and they get a map, and they have it in teams, and they got to go around and get stuff. It takes them all over the Bay. It's a whole day event. Able-bodied kids or non-disabled kids participate in that. Everything we do is about integration. Nothing we do is segregated. Part of it was we learned a very valuable lesson from this - actually it was the Alameda kids that gave us that lesson. When we did this first Halloween party, we had all these kids who thought, "Wow, this is great!" The teacher at Alameda High School said, "This is great, but we're not addressing one problem. And the problem was these kids already do a good job at socializing amongst each other. What they want help with is socializing with the other kids in school, trying to break through that barrier." So we're starting to work on that. We thought, "Wow, that's probably a bigger problem. We got to figure out how to make that happen." And I think again, bringing those other kids into our world in a way that's cool is the solution, so we're working on that. Stuart James: We now also have a program that we do - it's primarily with vets, but it actually spans across anyone with a spinal cord injury. This is also the reverse integration. We get them out playing sports. This was a wheelchair tennis camp we did. We had Serena Williams as a guest, and we had coaching from the Alameda Women's Tennis Team. Nothing makes vets happier than playing tennis with college women. [chuckle] This young man here on the screen, Michaela, is a veteran playing tennis with one of our players. And I happened to walk past at this moment and I said, "How's it going?" and he said it was the greatest day of his life! [laughter] Stuart James: But actually there is a more serious purpose to this. It is to get them out. A lot of the vets live on an island on the VA. They have a lot of support, but they don't get off of that island. And there was one young man that participated in this particular event. He was fresh off his injury, broke his back in Afghanistan and wasn't doing well getting back out into the world. He was in tremendous shape. He was going to the VA every day and working out. But he just didn't want to go and do anything, and his PT, his physical therapist made him come to this, and we couldn't get him to play. I tried and tried and tried, but he just sat and played on his phone. Then the Academy of Arts Women's Tennis Team girls, some of whom were in wheel chairs and some of whom were not, took his phone and said he didn't come here for that, he came here to play tennis with them, and he did, and he ended up leaving with them. [chuckle] because those were the girls that he didn't think would be interested in him anymore, and once he realized, he got past that mental hurdle, that they didn't care, he was feel better about himself. So a lot of the programming we do now is premised in that, is trying to get people with disabilities to see themselves in a different way, and to raise the expectation they have for them self in the world. Stuart James: I think that one of the problems that I saw when I got to Berkley was that a lot of 05/24/17 Page 5 of 29 | CommissiononPersonswithDisabilities/2017-04-12.pdf |