Thoughts
People with disabilities have the highest rate of unemployment, the lowest educational achievement, and the highest rate of poverty of any recognized minority group. At 20 percent of the population, the disability community is also the largest minority group, comprising the full range of American diversity. A significant difference is that it is the only minority group that anyone may “join†at any time, making disability issues vitally important to everyone. Despite the progress in civil rights of people with disabilities and the evolution of the disability rights movement, organized philanthropy and individual contributors have been slow to respond to the new model.
The prevailing view of disability, as reflected in mainstream media portrayals, is the “medical model,†which views people with disabilities predominantly as patients to be treated and/or clients requiring special services that set them apart from mainstream society. Over the past 30 years, however, an increasingly rapid move away from this older model has energized the disability community. Rather than locating the problem as the disability within the person, the new paradigm looks at the nexus between the individual with a disability and the environment. From the perspective of this “socioeconomic model,†the problem is not a person’s inability or disability, but social, attitudinal, architectural and environmental barriers. While foundations and individual donors have been pivotal in providing support for research, cures and medical innovation that have made it possible for millions of people with disabilities to live longer and better than ever before, the emerging paradigm is still relatively unknown to many in the philanthropic community and the general public. The Foundation Center reports that approximately 50% of grants for people with disabilities fall into categories like health, medical research and mental health, while disability-related grants for civil rights, social action, employment and education account for well under 20% all together. The under-funding of disability and the prevalence of the medical model combine to create a situation in which too little money is given to disability programs, and much of the money that is given goes to a range of needs that includes important issues but is incomplete. This means that disability organizations face the challenge of raising public awareness and educating potential contributors about the broad range of giving opportunities to help people with disabilities live full, productive lives--including employment, education, arts and culture, housing and transportation as well as the undeniably important medical issues. |
