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 Justice
For All (JFA) & The American Association for People with
Disabilities (AAPD) Announces 2003 Hearne Award Recipients
AAPD Press Release, December 2, 2003
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An AAPD Press
Release: 2003 Paul G. Hearne/AAPD Leadership Award Recipients
Announced; Award Presentations to be Made March 16th in
Washington, DC
The American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) is
delighted to announce that the following three individuals have
been selected by a national advisory committee to receive the
2003 Paul G. Hearne/AAPD Leadership Awards for emerging leaders
with disabilities:
* Cheri Blauwet, Menlo Park, CA
* Alison Ashley Hilman, Washington, DC
* Kevin Long, Minneapolis, MN
"AAPD is delighted to honor and recognize three extraordinary
individuals with this year's Paul G. Hearne/AAPD Leadership
Awards," says Andrew J. Imparato, AAPD President and CEO. "Each
of them has already demonstrated a commitment to helping to grow
the strength and influence of the disability rights movement,
both in this country and internationally, and helping to build
bridges to a more inclusive society."
The 2003 Paul G. Hearne/AAPD Leadership Award recipients, whose
biographies are attached, were selected on a highly competitive
application basis by a national advisory committee to receive
cash awards of $10,000 to further their work in the disability
community.
The Milbank Foundation for Rehabilitation established The Paul
G. Hearne Leadership Awards program in 1999 to recognize and
carry on the work of Paul G. Hearne, AAPD's founder and a
renowned leader in the national disability community, as well as
to realize his goal of cultivating emerging leaders to carry on
the disability movement.
Administration of this program was passed to AAPD in 2000, and
The Milbank Foundation for Rehabilitation continues to provide
major program sponsorship. 34 awards of $10,000 each have been
made to date.
AAPD is grateful to the additional sponsors of the Paul G.
Hearne/AAPD Leadership Awards Program: The Mitsubishi Electric
America Foundation and The Seth Sprague Educational and
Charitable Foundation. This year's Paul G. Hearne/AAPD
Leadership Award recipients will be honored guests at AAPD's
third-annual Leadership Gala on March 16, 2004 at the Washington
Hilton and Towers, Washington, DC. During this commemorative
event, each recipient will be presented with a cash award, as
well as a handsome crystal flame signifying the passing of the
torch. The award presentations will be made by Members of
Congress.
Biographies of the 2003 Paul G. Hearne/AAPD
Leadership Award Recipients
CHERI BLAUWET
Blauwet, world-class athlete, medical school student and a coach
for youth with disabilities, is the founder of the International
Institute for Disability Advocacy (IIDA). Cheri, a paraplegic
since being injured on her family's farm at the age of one,
graduated from the University of Arizona, where she also coached
wheelchair track. Currently, she attends Stanford School of
Medicine and hopes to receive an M.D. and a Masters of Public
Health.
While at the
University of Arizona, Cheri founded IIDA
www.iida.us, a nonprofit
organization created to improve the quality of life for disabled
people in developing nations. She continues to serve IIDA as its
Director of Public Relations. Among her goals for IIDA, it will
provide undergraduate scholarships to the University of Arizona
for students with disabilities from developing nations, plus put
those students through an Advocacy Training Institute.
In 2002, Cheri interned at the United States Agency for
International Development (USAID) in the bureau of Global
Health, Washington, DC. During that time, she met Congressman
Jim Kolbe (R-AZ), who expressed great support for IIDA.
A four-time Paralympic medal winner (Sydney 2002) and
international wheelchair racer, Cheri has done extensive work in
the area of adaptive athletics and is now a spokesperson for the
U.S. Paralympics. Also in 2002, she won several marathons,
including the wheelchair division of the New York City Marathon,
and was one of only twenty people nationally to be chosen for
the USA Today Academic All-American Team. In 2003, she won the
wheelchair division of the Los Angeles Marathon, and has also
been nominated for the "2003 Sportswoman of the Year" by the
Women's Sports Foundation.
Cheri travels to speak to large corporate and public audiences
about disability sport and how it can lead to personal
development, and coaches youth with disabilities through the Bay
Area Outreach and Recreation Program. Her goals are to become a
developmental pediatrician; she plans to work abroad and
continue to develop the IIDA while working as a physician. She
also hopes to become involved in international health policy,
and to continue to leverage her athletic talents to promote a
general agenda of disability rights.
Cheri's Paul G.
Hearne/AAPD Leadership Award mentor will be Congressman Kolbe,
who has said, "Individuals with disabilities, both in this
country and in developing nations, have the potential to shape
our social and economic landscape in innumerable ways." He
explains that Cheri increased disability awareness at the
University of Arizona and enriched the student body by
implementing the Disability Advocacy Training Institute.
ALISON ASHLEY HILLMAN
Hillman is a psychiatric survivor who, just six years ago and a
few years after receiving her bachelor's degree with distinction
from Cornell University, was handcuffed and taken to the
psychiatric ward of her local hospital and diagnosed with
bipolar disorder. There, she rotated in and out of a locked ward
for five months.
Alison went through bankruptcy and was on food stamps, Medicare
and SSI, but also abandoned her dream of becoming an
international human rights lawyer. For two more years, she
struggled and experienced firsthand the vast barriers that
people with psychiatric disabilities face, including barriers to
accessing employment and healthcare, plus debilitating stigma
and discrimination.
But she survived, received her law degree cum laude from
American University's Washington College of Law in 2002, and
fulfilled her dream of becoming an international human rights
lawyer. In 2002, Alison was awarded a New Voices Fellowship to
work with Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI). New
Voices is a national leadership development program that helps
nonprofit organizations recruit or retain creative and diverse
"new voices" in the field.
Through this fellowship, Alison now serves as Director of MDRI's
Americas Advocacy Initiative, where she works for the
international recognition and enforcement of the rights of
people with mental disabilities. In this capacity, she confronts
and addresses the very barriers she experienced.
Since October
2002, Alison has been conducting a study of mental health
services in Peru, investigating abuses in psychiatric hospitals,
analyzing available services from an international human rights
framework, and identifying violations of national disability
legislation.
She also encourages the development of consumer support groups,
speaking on human rights and mental disability and organizing
workshops with fellow psychiatric survivors. As a result,
consumer groups have grown in size and influence and have become
vocal advocates for reforming Peru's mental health services.
She is preparing
to bring a case before the Inter-American Commission on Human
Rights (IACHR), a body within the Organization of American
States, to challenge abuses in a South American psychiatric
institution. Because this will be the first case before the
IACHR to address ongoing abuses at an institution, it will be
groundbreaking. Alison's hope is that the case will establish
legal precedent in the Inter-American system that recognizes and
enforces the rights of people with mental disabilities, but also
determine that there must be community alternatives for people
with mental disabilities and that detention in psychiatric
facilities is inappropriate.
Alison's goals are to empower consumer-driven support and
advocacy organizations through workshops and trainings in
advocacy, human rights of people with mental disabilities,
documentation of human rights violations, and the establishment
of a small grants program for consumer-run advocacy
organizations.
Through
litigating cases before the IACHR and working toward the
eradication of institutionalization for people with mental
disabilities, she aims to establish legal precedent for people
with mental disabilities' right to appropriate treatment in the
community.
According to her
mentor, Laurie Ahern, Associate Director of MDRI, "Alison is
committed to eradicating human rights violations perpetrated
against one of the world's most vulnerable populations."
KEVIN LONG
Long is the Founder and CEO of the Global Deaf Connection (GDC)
in Minneapolis, Minnesota, an international development
non-profit organization whose mission is to develop
self-sustaining, successful cycles of deaf education and
leadership skills through multi-cultural exchange, support
and mentoring programs. These cycles will assist Deaf
people around the world to increase their social and economic
self-sufficiency. In 1995, Kevin, who has dyslexia and who at
that time had an "I can't do it" outlook, started a for-profit
business in lieu of facing college. Though that venture proved
successful, he realized that he required academic business
skills to succeed and realize his dreams, and tackled college
head-on with an "I can" attitude by utilizing note takers and
tutors. He received his BA in International Nonprofit Management
from Metropolitan State University and his AAS in Sign Language
Interpreting from St. Paul Technical College.
The idea to create GDC
www.deafconnection.org was born after Kevin served as a
volunteer teacher at a school for Deaf children in Kenya. When
he signed to a student, "What do you want to do when you grow
up?" the student replied, "I'm Deaf," as if the possibility of
doing something wasn't an option because she was Deaf. She asked
Kevin if America has Deaf people who work and are productive.
This was a turning point for Kevin and he felt inspired to work
for better education and leadership creation for Deaf
communities in developing countries.
Since Kevin
founded GCD in 1997, he has organized multiple groups of Deaf
Americans to Kenya, Jamaica and the Democratic Republic of
Congo, to work with and serve as mentors to Deaf people. Through
GDC's College Support Program, a program that is a first-of-its
kind in Africa, thirteen Deaf Kenyans have been provided
scholarships and full-time Kenyan Sign Language interpreters at
a teachers college in Kenya. GCD now provides unique leadership
development opportunities for the Deaf community in the U.S. and
internationally. Kevin was one of thirteen individuals from the
U.S. and Canada awarded an Ashoka Fellowship in 2002. Ashoka's
mission is to develop the profession of social entrepreneurship
around the world, and Ashoka Fellows are leading social
entrepreneurs who have been recognized as having innovative
solutions and the potential to change patterns across society.
Kevin explains that, equipped with the recognition afforded him
through the Ashoka Fellowship, he is able to use his own example
as a leader with a hidden disability to convince governmental
institutions of the importance of equal access to education in
the Deaf community.
His efforts are
having results. USAID recently allocated $250,000 to support
sustainable Deaf education in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Funds will be used for Deaf Americans to provide training and
for Deaf Congolese adults to earn teaching certificates with
support from Congolese Sign Language interpreters. Kevin's goal
for the next five years is to focus on GDC's expansion. To
accomplish this, he is hiring new staff and partnering with
other organizations, taking care to seek out and engage disabled
people in the U.S. and internationally. By 2007, thanks to GDC,
Kenya, Jamaica and the Democratic Republic of Congo will have
self-sustaining cycles of Deaf Education. Toward achievement of
that goal, GDC will send Deaf education professionals to
developing countries, sponsor Deaf people through teachers
colleges with interpreters, and mentor Deaf teachers in
developing countries to become leaders at their Deaf schools.
Kevin is also committed to continually promoting leaders with
hidden disabilities through the use of media. Alan Cartwright,
co-founder of GDC and Program Director of the Deaf & Hard of
Hearing Center at The Arc of Anchorage, will be Kevin's mentor
for the coming year. He has been guiding Kevin in the
development of GDC for the past six years and says, "It has been
great to watch Kevin develop as a leader in the disability
community. He fought through obstacle after obstacle that would
have stopped most of us in our tracks.
Kevin now has
big plans to develop an advisory committee in Washington, DC, to
advocate for the international Deaf Community. I am excited to
continue supporting Kevin in his endeavors and will do all that
I can to ensure his ongoing success."
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