Online Journal - May 27, 2009

Executive Director’s Forum

The Executive Directors of Independent Living Centres traveled to Ottawa for this year’s Forum – May 7 & 8th.   First of all, I would like to thank BMO for sponsoring this year’s event.   We were delighted to have David Sharone, Product Manager from BMO attend the event and facilitate an educational workshop along with Brendon Pooran, a Toronto based lawyer who specializes in disability law.  Both David and Brendon are experts on the Canadian Government’s new Registered Disability Savings Plan (RDSP) Program.  The funding from BMO and the workshop enabled IL Canada to build the capacity of local Executive Directors to educate persons with disabilities to access RDSP information, understand if they are eligible, help support them with making the decision one way or another and finally informing them how to access additional information from a financial institution.


Other topics addressed at the Forum included diversity and IL, trends in fundraising, human resources, and most importantly sharing information on exciting new initiatives across the country.  IL Centres are community based, reflect the needs of local communities and can be very different from one region to another.   Staff and volunteers of IL Centres are a never ending source of innovation and creativity.

These face-to-face meetings are extremely valuable and in my opinion, critical to the success of developing and delivering disability programming across the country. Unfortunately, at this time, there is less and less funding out there to support national events.  We are extremely grateful for the BMO support’s to enable us to connect face-to-face. 

What I found incredible at the Forum was how supportive we are of each other. I had been experiencing some health problems and other issues and each and every Executive Director provided support, ideas, and strategies to help me get through a difficult period.  For that I am extremely grateful.  I was surprised by the outpouring of support but I really shouldn’t be. This is simply IL and peer support in action.



Office move – Official Count Down

Well, we have one month to finish the interior construction of our new location and pack up an entire office for our move.  We have so much stuff!  Years and years of internal and external publications, files, documents, new and old equipment, old furniture, filing cabinets, accounting boxes…you name it, we have it.  Pillaging starts soon and my guess is that we can eliminate at least 50% of what we currently have stored in our office and storage locker. Where does all this stuff come from? 

The local Ottawa IL Centres is going through the same process because they are moving with us. Therefore, you can expect the national office staff to be very busy dealing with our moving issues during the month of June.

Below our some pictures of the new space.
(picture of new office building and picture of current empty space) 

We have one month now to turn that empty space into a fully accessible and modern office for IL Canada and the IL Centre here in Ottawa.
I’ll keep you posted.


New staff

IL Canada is pleased to welcome Amy Grumberg to the National Office staff. Amy was the successful applicant in the recent Researcher/Writer competition and comes to us from the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law where she was the Manager of Equity and Academic Success. In this position she was responsible for the oversight and implementation of accommodations for students with disabilities.

Amy is fluently bilingual in both official languages and holds a Bachelor of Arts from Mount Allison University and a Masters of Science Degree from Syracuse University with Graduate Certificates of Advanced Study in both Disability Studies and Women’s Studies. Amy will be assuming project oversight for the Food for Thought Project and will also be working to help develop our research and policy capacity within IL Canada.

Previous Staff Member

Do you remember Jihan Abbas, previously IL Canada’s Director/Research and Policy?
Jihan was just awarded the  prestigious Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship (CGS). She will receive $50,000 a year for up to three years.

The press release included the following information about Jihan:

“Jihan Abbas (sociology and anthropology) has both personal and professional experience in the field of disability and equality rights. She was the former director of research and policy for Independent Living Canada and now serves on the board of directors for ARCH Disability Law Centre. Her research interests include disability and the labour market, social policy and inclusion and exclusion. Her graduate work aims to build a more inclusive society.
Introduced in the 2008 Federal budget, the CGS program was created to strengthen Canada’s ability to attract and retain the world’s top doctoral students. It will encourage partnerships, promote world-class excellence and help brand Canada as a leader in higher learning, research and science and technology development. This year, a total of 166 scholarships will be awarded. When fully operational, the CGS program will support 500 students per year”
Independent Living Canada congratulates Jihan Abbas on her award and we are very proud of her accomplishment! We have no doubt that she will be an ambassador of IL in all of her future studies and work.
For more information on the scholarship program go to:
 http://www.vanier.gc.ca/vppo-pvsu-eng.shtml

Until next time...