#Nothing about us without us disability archive#

For years, the disability community has knocked on our doors, tried to pitch to our funding priorities, but most donors are unable to see the work of disability organizations as “fitting” within donor strategies. And philanthropy too often reinforces ableism through inaccessible grantmaking processes and communications, failure to include disability in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts, and starkly insufficient funding. Only by challenging these socially constructed norms can we create truly inclusive communities and workplaces. It perpetuates stereotypes and discriminatory practices deeply rooted in anti-Blackness, eugenics, misogyny, colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism. Lewis defines it, ableism defaults and prioritizes non-disabled bodies. “A system that places value on people’s bodies and minds based on societally constructed ideas of normality, intelligence, excellence, desirability, and productivity,” as Talila A. Without recognizing disability as a political identity grounded in community and pride, we cannot fully understand why disability is fundamental to social justice (or why social justice is fundamental to dismantling ableism.) Disability has a culture indeed, it has many cultures. However, disability is also an identity rooted in a long history of power, discrimination, and community. Traditionally, many equate disability with a medical impairment or diagnosis, relegating the issue to medical professionals who seek cures and parents who seek therapies. Understand Frameworks of Disability and Recognize Ableism in Philanthropy We hope that by sharing the steps we have taken, and our lessons learned, other funders can build a roadmap toward disability inclusion.

#Nothing about us without us disability archive#

Girls and young women with disabilities experience gender-based violence at rates up to 10 times more than those without disabilities.Īre you enjoying this article? Read more like this, plus SSIR's full archive of content, when you subscribe.ĭisability is a relatively untapped area of investment for philanthropy, but one that offers promise of change and multiple avenues for donor impact. Disabled people are three times as likely to be denied healthcare-and twice as likely as non-disabled people to die from lack of basic care-while up to 50 percent of use-of-force incidents with the police involve a person who is disabled. On the other, disability also causes poverty, given the outsized expenses of healthcare, discrimination in employment, and public policies which are designed to limit many disabled people to subminimum wages. On the one hand, poverty causes disability in a myriad of ways, from lack of access to healthcare and proper nutrition to a greater likelihood of living and working in dangerous environments. Disability not only intersects but profoundly exacerbates the very inequality that social justice philanthropy is committed to addressing. This humbling moment pushed us to make a comprehensive effort toward disability inclusion in both our grantmaking and operations.ĭisability leaders have been teaching us that addressing inequality means understanding and investing in disability work. In 2016, disability leaders called the Ford Foundation out for excluding disability in the foundation’s then new mission to combat inequality. Funding for disability policy, advocacy, and rights is paltry, with just six foundations investing over $1 million in 2018, while, globally, just $57 million of grantmaking included persons with disabilities (even more dismal given that more than 80 percent of persons with disabilities live in the Global South). And yet a CEP report on equity in philanthropy notes that just 9 percent of foundations reported an increase of funding related to people with disabilities since the pandemic began, and not one explicitly mentioned disability in any of their interviews.

One in five Americans have a disability, one in every three families has a household member with a disability, and more than one in three of us globally will eventually join the community. invisibility can create inequality, and unequal treatment can itself lead to, or reinforce, invisibility.” persons with disabilities are treated as if they are invisible. 1 As the new UN Special Rapporteur for Persons with Disabilities Gerard Quinn noted at the Human Rights Council’s 46th session, 'The COVID-19 pandemic has painfully shown that. COVID-19 has laid bare what the disability community has been telling us all along: current systems have failed people with disabilities because they were not created with disabled people in mind.