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Sunday, June 27, 2010

WELCOME TO HOLLAND


c1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley. All rights reserved

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this......

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."

"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."

But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.

But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.

Friday, June 18, 2010

Match Day


Dear Supporter of Community Advocates for Persons with Developmental Disabilities:

The Kalamazoo Community Foundation is celebrating its 85th birthday this year and has given Kalamazoo's nonprofit community—and generous donors like you—85,000 reasons to celebrate with them on Match Day!


Match Day is a very special event designed to help nonprofit organizations like Community Advocates for Persons with Developmental Disabilities build the endowment fund established for our benefit at the Community Foundation. On Match Day, which will take place on June 23 in Bronson Park, the Community Foundation will match each dollar donated to the Community Advocates for Persons with Developmental Disabilities Fund with 50 cents that will be available for us to use immediately. There is $85,000 in match dollars available!


On Match Day, you are invited to come to the park anytime between 11 a.m. and 6 p.m. and make a donation to the "Community Advocates for Persons with Developmental Disabilities Fund." Donations must be made in person and can be made by cash, check or credit card (Visa, MasterCard, Discover or American Express).


You can come to the park and donate anytime throughout the day, but we encourage you to come early, because while donations will be accepted all day, they will only be matched until the $85,000 is exhausted. For complete Match Day details, including information about maximum donations, how your gift will be receipted, and Michigan Community Foundation Tax Credit eligibility, please visit the Kalamazoo Community Foundation's Web site at www.kalfound.org


Thank you for considering a gift to Community Advocates that will benefit the people we serve for years to come.


Sincerely,


Carl Phalin, Chairperson

Deb Russell, CEO/President


And members of the Board of Community Advocates:

Brian Bruce, Chairperson Elect Dawn Pantaleo, Immediate Past Chairperson Michael Payne, Treasurer

Steve Barber, Secretary

Susan Brooks , Diana DeVries , Fran Hoard , Ian Kennedy & Mary Connors

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Guardianship and its Alternatives Presentation

As an advocacy organization for persons with developmental disabilities, we at Community Advocates would like to share information with you on this subject. It is truly our desire to provide you with as much information as possible so that your family can make an informed decision about this very personal and emotional subject. We would like to invite you to an informal presentation and discussion.

Please allow us the pleasure of your presence on Tuesday, June 22nd at 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm at our office. We will present information from full guardianship to possible alternative options for persons with Developmental Disabilities. There will also be an opportunity to network with other families who are experiencing this same cross road. Refreshments will be served.

Please RSVP to Lori West. 1-269-342-9801 at extension 203 or e-mail: lwest@communityadvocates.org

Looking forward to seeing you.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Community Advocates on Monday Night Live


Community Advocates was incorporated as a nonprofit corporation in 1953 as an affiliate of both the state and national units of what was then known as the Association for Retarded Children. Those organizations are now known simply as The Arc. Our affiliation remains close and continues its purpose to seek the best possible services and support for children and adults with disabilities.

Initially, our constituency was individuals with intellectual disabilities and their families. Over time, we have broadened our outreach to include people with a variety of developmental disabilities. Our geographical scope is Kalamazoo County, but although we have provided advocacy assistance to people from surrounding counties on a case-by-case basis.

In the early years our organization was a direct provider of services, organized and run by volunteers, primarily parents. In the 1960's we began to create other programs, and during the 1980's and 1990's we created programs run by other agencies and incorporated new organizations as needed.

During the 1970's we spearheaded a planning process that prepared this county to provide the services needed to further the task of deinstitutionalization. That network of services remains largely intact today.

Our mission remains:
We exist as an advocacy organization to make it possible for each person with a disability to participate fully in all aspects of community and to support the effort of each individual to determine his/her own future.


And here is our Deb Russell (CEO) and Carl Phalin (Board Chair) with Keith Roe the host of Monday Night Live. This was televised on June,7 2010.




Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Community Advocates’ Ribfest 2010 Preview

Who: YOU!

You loved Ribfest last year! You're gonna love it this year too!

Please join us Tuesday evening for a sneak preview of Ribfest 2010 and to learn more about the organization behind Ribfest: Community Advocates.

What: Community Advocates' Ribfest 2010 Preview

When: Tuesday, June 15, 2010 from 6-7:30 PM

Where: Art Van Furniture Showroom (550 Ring Rd. Portage, MI)

Through this preview we will inform our partners and sponsors who help to make Community Advocates' Ribfest successful about the mission of our organization and to preview highlights of the 2010 Annual Community Advocates' Ribfest. There will be refreshments, great people, displays, games, and sign up to volunteer, Ribfest prizes, and a brief program.


Bring your friends and family but don't forget to let us know if you're coming- so we have enough food to go around! Please RSVP by Friday, June 11th to Vickie at Commadvocates@communityadvocates.org or by calling 269.342.9801 ex. 200 or you can RSVP via Facebook at:
http://www.facebook.com/event.ph
p?eid=129320043760121&index=1


Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Defining Normal


by : Kelsey Cline


What is normal? Who is normal? I have been faced with this dilemma for the past couple of years. From the several dictionaries that I have searched, the definition of normal is something along the lines of: "conforming to the standard or the common type; usual; not abnormal; regular; natural". So from that definition, anybody or anything that does not conform to the decided standard is not normal. Who decided this standard that is mentioned in the above definition? Do I decide for myself? Is it decided by my peers? Or is it decided by the environment that I grew up in?


I am currently attending college pursuing a degree in Special Education. Many of my classes compare people with disabilities to their "normal" peers. These statements in the past couple of years have forced me to think about who my normal peers are. Everybody talks about them, but I have yet to be told who they are. It makes me question whether I am normal or not. Using myself as an example, let's dive into the definition to figure out whether I am normal or not.


Because the definition stated above still lacks what the "standard or the common type" actually is, let's use the proposal that the definition can be set by peers. Growing up in a public school system in middle class suburbia, the unspoken, but well known definition of normal set by my peers was "a person who is not weird, who does not have a disability, and somebody who fits in." So basically the popular kids are the normal ones. Although, after knowing some popular kids, I don't see how that can be right. I, myself, was certainly not a popular kid and I do not think I would have had as nearly a good high school experience as I did if I had to fit in those parameters. I didn't play any sports, I took AP classes, and I played percussion and the clarinet for the school marching band. I was a total band geek (despite my trying to hide it for the first couple of years), so of course I'm going to be weird, and I'm not going to be popular and fit in with the cool kids! I just didn't realize that being in band was going to make me not normal. If I had to give up everything I loved in high school, just to attempt to not be weird, and fit in with the crowd, I'm happy to be classified as not normal.


I have several non-normal points against me (recall the nerdy bank geek thing), but let's look at my family to see if they are any more normal than me. Let's see…I have a mom, a dad, and a sister. My parents are still married after 26 years, which, let's face it, isn't exactly normal anymore with the divorce rates these days. My parents only had the two of us, and that doesn't match up to the average 2.3 kids per family, so I guess that's a couple more non-normal points. Oh yeah, my sister has autism. That automatically threw me out of the running based on the reactions from my peers in school. So based on all the points that I've racked up from my family, I guess it's safe to assume that I am not normal.


The definition that I grew up with from my home differs from the definition set at school. The way I grew up, I learned that everybody has quirks, and everybody is different. That completely contradicts the definition of normal set by the environment at the school. So now the big question is, what should I believe?


I have taken the definition set by my peers in school, and the environment in which I grew up, and my experiences in the past several years, and I have formed my own definition of normal. My definition is blurry, but can be described as "an inappropriate way to describe oneself when comparing themselves to people who are different." This definition may seem harsh, but then again, the situations in which this term was used that I've witnessed have also been harsh.


The above statement is my personal definition of normal, and I know that not everybody is going to agree with me. Instead of just accepting other people's definitions and taking that as fact, please decide what normal is for you. If you truly believe you know who is normal, and who is not normal, then I can't stop you from believing what you believe. What I do want people to consider before deciding on a personal definition is this: a person only knows his or her own life, and it is the only life he or she will ever know, so why do other people get to decide whether it is normal or not? What if somebody judged you on the way you walk, or the way you talk, or the way you go about life? What if because of your differences, people called you "not normal"?


What I have proposed to people regarding this definition has rewarded me a lot of weird looks, but what I advocate to people is that nobody is normal, so we should just remove that word from our dictionaries, at least with regards to people. If nobody fits the stereotype, there really is no use for the word, so let's not use it. Everybody has something different about them, or a deficit in some area of life. If everybody has them, I just do not understand how some people are considered normal, and other's not. I have not found a person who does not have some quirk about them, so until I find that perfect person with no flaws, I maintain that there is nobody out there who is truly normal.