One of HPOD’s core remits is to strengthen the self-advocacy movement by building the capacity of self-advocacy organizations through trainings and technical support. HPOD has done so by partnering with self-advocacy and other civil society organizations in the United States and abroad to develop and disseminate information materials and provide trainings.

Youth with Disabilities

HPOD has collaborated with Self Advocates Becoming Empowered (SABE) and the Institute for Community Inclusion at the University of Massachusetts to create a novel online training program for youth with intellectual and developmental disabilities on guardianship alternatives. Youth “ambassadors” for alternatives to guardianship who have intellectual and developmental disabilities and hail from Georgia, Vermont, and Wisconsin completed SABE’s training program as part of the Administration for Community Living-funded Center for Youth Voice, Youth Choice (CYVYC) project. These youth are now working in their communities to promote alternatives to guardianship and work for systemic changes in their states. Also, HPOD Executive Director Professor Michael Ashley Stein and Director of Advocacy Initiatives Hezzy Smith contributed legal research to the project’s online database of information on states’ alternatives to guardianship laws.

Self-Advocacy & Research

HPOD also continued its innovative projects to empower self-advocates to contribute to meaningful research about the communities they represent. For example, in partnership with the Samuel Centre for Social Connectedness and Massachusetts Advocates Standing Strong (MASS), HPOD hosted renowned self-advocate Chester Finn for a summer research fellowship. HPOD is supporting him to research self-advocates’ perspectives on a plain language tool that MASS has developed to assist self-advocates to create supported decision-making agreements. Similarly, HPOD worked with Self Advocacy Association of New York State (SANYS) and MASS researchers to analyze their findings and share their experiences from a scoping literature review of resources for students with disabilities about transfer of rights under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), as part of a larger participatory action research project with the Institute for Community Inclusion at the University of Massachusetts. HPOD Director of Advocacy Initiatives Hezzy Smith presented these findings alongside Shameka Andrews of SANYS and Kamisha Heriveaux of MASS at TASH’s annual conference. Simultaneously, HPOD has continued its community-based, participatory research project with self-advocate researcher Anne Fracht on the experiences of group home residents in Massachusetts during the pandemic, in order to shine a light on the underexplored experiences of people with IDD by helping them to tell their stories in their own words.

China

HPOD has continued its decades of education and capacity building efforts for disability inclusion and equal participation of persons with disabilities in China. To raise awareness of disability human rights among the next generation of Chinese disability rights advocates, HPOD’s China Program Director Dr. Fengming Cui has continued training and teaching to students from various Chinese universities, offered lectures and talks on various topics to a broader audience throughout the region, and led the development of appropriate training curricula and materials for local communities. For example, Dr. Cui led the development of an online training curriculum, mobilized HPOD’s network of disabled people organization trainers and leveraged HPOD’s library of Chinese-language training materials to train Special Olympics athletes and their families from across the East Asia Region on advocacy and leadership skills. As a continuation of these efforts, Dr. Cui and HPOD Executive Director Professor Michael Ashley Stein spoke at a Conference on the Implementation of the Marrakesh Treaty in China located in Beijing. Closer to home, HPOD assisted Self Advocates Becoming Empowered (SABE) by producing Chinese-language translations of informational resources developed by SABE to broaden their outreach to the Chinese-speaking community in the United States.