The New Brunswick Association for Community Living (NBACL) has launched a campaign aimed at creating a more inclusive province.
The “End Exclusion” campaign is a fundraiser that association members hope will raise $3 million over a five-year period.
The campaign’s chair, Doug Willms, said the funds will help support 10,000 New Brunswickers who deserve to be included in community programs, schools and in society.
“They’re people who have a disability, but that’s not who they are,” Willms said. “They’re boys and girls and young adults, adolescents… and I think that’s really kind of important, to see them as people first of all, who don’t deserve to be excluded.”
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“It is all demographics and it’s not just the people with a disability, but it’s also those families who are in need of support,” Willms said.
He said the campaign has already raised close to $1 million and said the unrestricted funds raised will go towards parent programs, school programs as well as to promote advocacy.
“The NBACL has a wide range of programs and they have reach right across the province,” Willms said.
Willms said people need to realize separating students with intellectual disabilities from the rest of the classroom isn’t a healthy way to handle the situation.
“As soon as you start thinking that they should be separated from others, you’ve missed the whole point,” Willms said.
He said having people from all walks of life in a classroom gives all students a sense of the “full richness of our society.”
Debbie Thomas is the association’s self-employment co-ordinator. She and her 21-year old daughter Kyra were in attendance at the announcement.
“We need community support to be able to support the community, so it is a cycle and we’re doing the best we can… but there’s always funds needed to try and make a difference for the people who require our help,” Thomas said.
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Kyra lives with an intellectual disability and participated in the “Transition to Work” program.
“Where we got involved in high school years for Kyra, it was a great program to be able to give her the tools that she needed to be able to enter into the workforce and it’s really been invaluable,” Thomas said. “They were such a support to us on so many fronts on how to navigate the systems in general beyond NABCL.”
She said she and her family didn’t know about many of the programs that were out there that could support them.
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