Summit History – Allies In Advocacy © 2023

Allies in Advocacy started in 2012 when a team of advocates and service providers were invited to a Self Advocacy Summit put on by the Administration on Developmental Disabilities and its three partners the University Centers, the State Developmental Disability Councils and the Protection and Advocacy Centers. This was one of many summits across the country bringing groups of advocates from multiple states together to discuss how to improve the lives of people with disabilities. At our summit we had the following states come Washington, Alaska, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, and Colorado. Each state had to present how they are currently doing then they had to create state and national priorities to work on.

Our Goals for the State were the following.

Have Self Advocates working in leadership roles at DD organizations (or any organizations that make choices about people who experience disabilities).
Establish non profit organizations ran by people with disabilities.
Educate schools about disability history and help families with kids with disabilities who are new to the system.
Create better employment opportunities for people with disabilities.
Create more community awareness about people with disabilities as well as keep the awareness of us up in Olympia.
Advocate for easier transportation options in the State.

We had two national goals which were.

Have a National and State level resource center for advocacy. This just means a central place to find all the resource needed to live, work, and play in our communities.
Have a regional meeting or national meeting every once and a while inviting one self-advocate from each state team.

The following were some priorities from the other states.

Alaska wanted to remove the R word from documents and have disability partners collaborate more.
Colorado wanted to get more self advocates involved and use alternative communication methods to reach people especially in rural areas.
Idaho wanted to see more employment opportunities and to see more advocacy at their state capitol.
Montana wanted to see all of the disability partners communicate more so everyone can be a cohesive unit.
North Dakota wants to see more accessible transportation and have a way for rural residents to be reached.
Wyoming wanted to see employment opportunities become better and more meaningful to people and they wanted to see the big three partners the university centers, the p and a’s and the DD councils become more involved with self advocacy.