How can you engage people with disabilities in grassroots organizing?

It is important to understand the kinds of priorities that people with disabilities have identified before, which is why research is important. It important to start though with a clear recognition that people are bringing their individual and unique skills, interests and talents to any advocacy conversation as well. There is a risk of grouping people by a clinical diagnosis to create “power in numbers”, while minimizing people’s unique life experience.

My favorite topic for the past 17 years. Point to remember: If any organization gets any funding from a government agency, it is no longer grassroots. They can have access to public information funded by the government. However, if grant money is accepted from government entities then they are working for the government collecting data and not providing advocacy for the patient. I have seen many good programs go bad, because people wanted a salary when the intent was to keep the role open for volunteers. Many good grassroots organizations become benefit corporations in order to avoid losing their mission focus that happens to many nonprofits due to grant writing. Concerns about salary than the patients' rights is NOT advocacy work.

A good way to do this is to enlist support with grassroot disabled people's organizations that can help you build relationships with their members. Involving their members in planning and management of your programs and keeping them engaged is one of the first steps towards keeping them engaged and involved in your program

Ensuring your programs are inclusive is one way of addressing barriers and meeting the diverse needs of the different groups within your project locations. Don’t assume you have solutions to all the societal inclusion problems, instead allow this to be an open forum where communities you work with lead the process. Through community/stakeholders driven engagement forums, determine barriers inhibiting the participation of different groups including persons living with disabilities and jointly come up with concrete context specific recommendations of addressing the barriers thus promoting inclusivity. Consider partnering with existing community structures to drive the change you seek as communities tend to listen more to their own.

Empower and inspire are awesome power words, that justly fits the needs of incorporating those with disabilities. Disabilities have been shunned for too long. Facts are, many organizations have individuals employed with disabilities and are not aware of it. Also, those with disabilities should not be discounted on how they may contribute to organizational goals.

While meeting basic accessibility needs is crucial for engaging people with disabilities in grassroots organizing, a truly inclusive approach requires a deeper understanding and process improvement. We must move beyond mere compliance and operationalize a framework that considers: 1. Historical and Lived Experiences: Assessing the impact of historical and ongoing discrimination on current settings. 2.Intermittent Evaluations: -Recognizing that static evaluations often fail to capture the dynamic needs of individuals and communities. -Implementing regular assessments to identify evolving challenges and adapt strategies accordingly. -Promoting open communication and feedback loops to ensure continuous improvement.

Grassroots organizing is a broadly inclusive term and use to describe efforts to organize a specific community in support of or opposition and grassroots" refers to the model of organizing, that involve a high level of participation from community members and volunteers. People with disabilities have diversity and according on kind of disability, making engage them needs specific method, therefore find knowledge about disabilities, pay attention to provide facilities and accessibility everything according on disability , Respect, encourage them to express their experiences,attitudes , show them how could be their knowledge matter.

Because of Grassroots organizations use collective action in different level to implement change, and associate with bottom-up make decisions and consider more natural power structures, and encourage members to contribute by taking responsibility and action for their community that’s why such a organizations have great role to empower people. For all clients specially for disabled people empowerment is vital , so preparing facilities to link them to grassroots according on their kind of disability and needs is very important. Identifying grassroots orgs and communication with them to get facilities for clients. Using social media and internet could be useful.