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YOUTH LEADERS VOW TO CONTINUE TRANSITION EFFORT

June 24, 2000

WASHINGTON - The 10 students at this week's National Transition Summit on Young People with Disabilities were among the most vocal and enthusiastic participants in the discussions of how to improve the process for students with disabilities. But these students were also, they pointed out, the only group with no organization or forum for continuing the discussion beyond the two-day conference.

To keep their momentum going, the students called for help from the other groups at the conference, which included parents, local, state and federal agency personnel, university researchers and members of national advocacy groups. "As the core component of the National Transition Summit on Young People with Disabilities, our group, the youth, recognizes the importance of our presence and the unique opportunity to represent a vital, numerous and important, though still underserved, segment of American society," said Alejandra Ospina, a 19-year-old college student from New York. "One of the easiest ways to best expedite change and cover all the things that everyone at this summit has covered is the existence of a task force on youth with disabilities."

DISABILITY CROWD PRESENTS FEDERAL AGENCIES LAUNDRY LIST OF TRANSITION NEEDS June 24, 2000

The task force would advise federal agencies on ways to facilitate self-advocacy and self-empowerment for youth with disabilities, establish a mentoring program and provide access to information about supports and services, she said. The youth group wants federal funding to continue meeting to develop the task force and other youth-organized projects on disability awareness, such as a "Youth Summit" bulletin board on the disability web site Half the Planet, said 13-year-old Oregon student Erin Schmale. That bulletin board would extend the discussion to other students with disabilities around the country.

The National School-to-Work office may be able to provide some of that funding, Director Stephanie Powers told the youth group. "I would be willing to entertain putting some money on the table for you to do a follow-up activity," she said, if the group can provide a plan that identifies specific goals for further meetings that would drive the students' agenda at the federal level. The Academy for Educational Development, which hosted the conference and which has extensive experience bidding for and winning federal education contracts, offered its staff and facilities to help the group draft its proposal.

Bob Williams, deputy assistant secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Disability, Aging and Long-term Care Policy, lamented the fact that, during the summit, the student group related experiences about school and work opportunities that are nearly identical to what he experienced in high school decades earlier. "That is unacceptable," he said, urging the students to continue speaking out to generate support from the rest of the disability community and the federal agencies.

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"Congress and the administration will follow as well, when they see that pity is not enough, that [Supplemental Security Income] is not enough and that what you are about is making a life for yourself and thus improving the lives and futures of all you touch," Williams told the students.

In addition to Ospina and Schmale, the students at the conference included Sascha Bittner, of San Francisco, Dana Collier, of Santa Monica, Calif., Tonya Downs, of Laurel, Md., Chris Gagliardi, of Englewood, N.J., Elizabeth Guerrero, of Portland, Ore., Jennifer Jones, of Anchorage, Julie Keys, of Chicago, Laurel Lawson, of Atlanta, Keith Lovett, of Houma, La., Carl Osborne, of Washington, Adedotun Osholowu, of Short Hills, N.J., Vanessa Alvarez Redd, of Montgomery Village, Md., Adam Sevigny, of Saco, Maine, and Anastasia Somoza, of New York.8