DIG is excited to announce that we will be participating in The Miami Foundation’s Give Miami Day 2015. Give Miami Day is an annual 24 hour online giving event. It allows anyone in our community to make an impact by supporting local non-profit organizations. It will begin midnight November 19th and go until midnight November 20th. To support DIG and donate on the day of the event, visit http://givemiamiday.org/#npo/disability-independence-group-inc.
GIVE MIAMI DAY 2014
DIG has officially been approved to participate in The Miami Foundation’s Give Miami Day on November 20, 2014! This is our first time participating in the 24-hour online giving event, and we are so excited to make this day a success. Be sure to check out our Facebook and Twitter leading up to the event for updates about the projects we are working on. Also be on the lookout for the link to our direct donation page, which we will be receiving soon. Gifts can be made through our individual link using either a credit or debit card and must be a minimum of $25. We can’t wait to see how much money we can raise, but we need your support!
Best Buddies Seminar – by Stephanie Woodward
In January I was invited to speak at Best Buddies Florida about lobbying and the importance of self-advocacy. I met with teams of Best Buddies Ambassadors to discuss current disability rights issues that they could talk about with their representatives in the Florida Legislature. Since each team of Ambassadors had one person with an intellectual disability and one nondisabled person, I talked to them about the roles of self-advocates and allies and how they can work together to be effective.
Since the Ambassadors were high school students they wanted to know what issues affect them that they could talk to their representatives about, so we discussed student loans; access to higher education for students with disabilities; ending subminimum wage so that the students could be paid fair wages when they begin working; and creating affordable, accessible, integrated housing so that the students could live independently in the community after they graduate.
The Ambassadors also had questions about what they should do if their representative rushes them or tries to control the conversation. We discussed different ways to handle these scenarios and practiced different things they wanted to say.
In the end, the Ambassadors were very excited to go to Tallahassee to advocate for disability rights and I was excited to see new young leaders for the Disability Rights Movement.
This month, Disability Independence Group was lucky enough to be chosen to participate in the University of Miami’s PhilADthropy event. Run through the School of Communication, PhilADthropy is a 25 hour event where undergraduate students work together in groups under the direction of a team leader from the community in order to provide 16 local nonprofit organizations with free advertising and creative services. As one of the chosen nonprofits, DIG was able to present our team with information and material about our new Animal Partners project which caters to persons with disabilities requiring assistance animals.
Our team, which consisted of eight undergraduate students and their group leader Manny from Sapient Nitro worked tirelessly from the time we briefed them on Friday afternoon until Saturday when they presented us with their finished products. In only a short period of time our team conducted a photo shoot, designed a logo, created a Facebook and twitter page, as well as helped to design a page to be added to our website, all of which will be instrumental in kicking off our Animal Partners project.
We would like to give a special thanks to the University of Miami for choosing us to participate in this truly amazing event as well as our team members, Liying, Erika, Holly, Brooke, Viviana, Alek, Sean, Alex, and Manny for all of their hard and incredible work!
Disability Independence Group Blog 