Dance the night away on May 20th!

Thanks to Nelson Cares for passing this along!

Queer Dance Party at the Royal

Kootenay Pride is hosting their first event of the year on Friday, May 20th from 8pm ‘til midnight at the Royal. This will be a fun evening to celebrate inclusion and equality for everyone, with awesome music from Mraki and our friend DJ Unalive. Tickets are $15 and can be purchased at https://www.theroyalnelson.com/events. All proceeds will go to the Christopher Moore Legacy Fund to help trans community members access gender-affirming care.

Everybody Belongs!

Hey everyone, the (previously postponed) Inclusion BC conference “Everybody Belongs!” is coming up in Surrey at the end of the month! You can get more information about the conference and register here.

COMMUNITY INCLUSION MONTH: Where we’re going

Hey everyone, we’ve been posting a series to celebrate Community Inclusion Month. We have talked about where we’ve been, and about some current issues where we are and how to self-advocate. And so, as we end Community Inclusion Month, we wanted to leave you with some thoughts about where we’re going.

While it’s impossible to know the future, our hope for where we’re going is described best by Cole Blakeway: We are all DIFFERENT, and that’s AWESOME!

Rights & Responsibilities…

Hey everyone, as you know we’ve been posting topics for Community Inclusion month and last week we talked a bit about self advocacy.

A really important part of self advocacy is standing up for your own rights. We have a whole page that talks about rights and responsibilities here, complete with help to understand different kinds of rights, like:

Everyone has rights as a person in Canada, and rights as a person in BC. If you have a disability and you are getting supports, you also have rights as a person who uses the services of Community Living BC (CLBC).

With all those different kinds of rights in mind, we thought this would be a good time to remind ourselves about this awesome conversation that helped explore rights and responsibilities:

If you’ve got questions about rights and responsibilities, please let us know or leave us a comment.

It’s PRIDE WEEK!

Hey everyone, October 24-31 is PRIDE WEEK in Kelowna, and there are a whole bunch of events going on to celebrate 25 Years of Kelowna Pride! You can check it all out here, including the bike derby, trans and non-binary storytelling evening and social, pride festival and pride cabaret.

You can find Kelowna Pride Society on Instagram at the link below, on Facebook here, and you can read about Pride Week on KelownaNow.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CVQb3rgJCdP/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet

COMMUNITY INCLUSION MONTH: Where we are

Hey everyone, we’ve been posting a series as part of Community Inclusion Month. Last week, we talked about where we’ve been in terms of disability rights and inclusion, and the work done by self-advocates who have brought the movement to where we are now. This week, we’re focusing on where we are by exploring some current issues and resources for self-advocacy.

So, what’s self-advocacy?

The BC People First Society (BCPF) talks about self-advocacy being what happens “when we stand up for our needs when they are not being met” and members help each other learn self-advocacy skills. Here is a video of the BCPF Advocacy Committee on Accessibility on YouTube.

The Self Advocate Net website has a whole page dedicated to self-advocacy topics, too, as well as a YouTube playlist of helpful videos here.

Here is an interview from Kelowna Now with Kelowna resident Shelley Decoste that was published on October 7th, to mark Community Inclusion Month. Shelley talks about her experiences and stereotypes about people with diverse abilities.

Here is a news article from CTV News about a young man from Toronto who is part of the Dear Everybody campaign put on each year by a rehabilitation hospital. He (and a team of young people with disabilities) are doing a virtual tour of classrooms and workplaces to talk about ableism.

What’s ableism?

Here’s how the Dear Everybody website explains it: Ableism is the discrimination towards someone based on their abilities, often favouring those who do not have a disability and seeing less value in those that do. And it needs to stop.

The idea is to get people talking about ableism, in order to end it — and that’s where self-advocates come in! Self-advocates can start great conversations about what’s wrong and how to fix it. You can see the videos made to start the Dear Everybody conversation here.

The Easter Seals website has a great idea on this page that would help start important conversations (like Shelley’s interview and like Dear Everybody). You can invite people you know to watch TED Talks about different disability issues, different people’s perspectives, and different experiences, and the then start a conversation about it, or a video chat, or have a talk on the phone. Or, if you’re interested in exploring another way to safely try out online community, you could post on the video page, a message board, or Facebook page, or post a comment below!

Check out the Easter Seals 10 suggested TED Talks about disability, accessibility, and inclusion to get started (printable list below).

COMMUNITY INCLUSION MONTH: Where we’ve been

Hey everyone, we’ve been posting a series as part of Community Inclusion Month. We explored a bit last week about how we can participate in community while we all focus on keeping each other safe and healthy, using tools like technology and online communities.

We also talked about how everyone has a right to be included in their community – and, that this is part of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD).

So, why are we talking about it again this week?

We are looking at where we’ve been so that we can see how much progress we’ve made.

Progress on the road to community inclusion — like the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities — can take a long, long, long time. That UN Convention we were talking about? That only happened 15 years ago, in 2006. It’s important to remember what things were like for people with disabilities at the start of the disability rights movement.

If you’re interested in hearing more about what it was like to fight for the rights of people with disabilities, you can check out this video featuring Judith Heumann (a disability rights activist from the US). YouTube is a great resource to find other people with disabilities sharing their stories and experiences.

When we see people and organizations (like CLBC) promoting community inclusion, human rights, and the rights of people with disabilities, we are seeing how far we’ve come thanks to the work of self-advocates all over the world (like Judith) — and we celebrate their achievements as part of Community Inclusion Month!

COMMUNITY INCLUSION MONTH: Let’s celebrate!

Hey everyone, we posted last week to kick off Community Inclusion Month. This week, we are exploring community inclusion through how we participate. COMMUNITY is one of the 7 keys to citizenship listed in Inclusion BC’s video. Everyone has a right to be included in their community. It’s part of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), check it out here.

Given that we are still battling the COVID-19 pandemic, we can consider how we want to participate in community while still keeping ourselves and others safe and healthy — such as getting outside into local parks (like the upcoming Spooktacular Pumpkin Walk coming up in Kelowna), or participating in an online community, like on the Inclusion BC Facebook page, through an event listed in the Family Support Institute’s Calendar for Connection (like the upcoming Halloween Howl), or alongside your favorite interests and hobbies (like on Pinterest) — or, in the comments section here, too!

Want to hear more about online communities? Let us know in the comments!

It’s COMMUNITY INCLUSION MONTH!

Hey everyone, October is COMMUNITY INCLUSION MONTH – so let’s celebrate inclusion in our communities!

All month long, we will be posting ways to celebrate inclusion, ways to build inclusion, and ways to explore the meaning of inclusion.

To get started, here are some places you can check out all month long for community inclusion month information, events, and posts:

HAVE YOUR SAY IN…Election Accessibility!

Hey everyone, as we already posted, we had a federal election yesterday (Monday, September 20th).

Elections Canada wants voting to be as accessible as possible. Leading up to the election, Elections Canada offered resources, information, and help to vote leading up to general election day (September 20th).

Now you can tell them how accessible voting was for YOU!

Click here to be taken to their online feedback form and use the “Member of the Public” button to tell them about your voting experience. There’s more information about accessible polling stations and feedback here.

Accessibility