CENTER FOR INDEPENDENT LIVING

The Center for Independent Living (The CIL) provides advocacy and services that increase awareness, collaboration, and opportunity among people with disabilities and the community at large.
Our programs provides people with skills, knowledge, and resources that empower them to eliminate damaging and stereotypical notions of disability so that they are able to strive toward realizing their full human potential.

TheCIL provides services that empower people with disabilities strive toward realizing their full human potential. TheCIL offers programs, workshops, classes, peer counseling and consultations to the the community members. Some focus areas include sports and recreation, assistive technology, the five pathways for transition-aged youth, travel training, housing modifications, housing consultations, and work incentives and benefits consulting.

TheCIL's staff work with clients on a 1-on-1 and group basis to assist them with the skills or knowledge so that they can pursue and often attain their goals. TheCIL strives to be a resource to people with disabilities.

TheCIL offers programs, workshops, classes, peer counseling and consultations to residents of Alameda County, and oftentimes we get inquiries from out of state and even internationally! In the last year, TheCIL opened a new office in Alameda, had more than 500 people members participate in programming, and answered nearly 8,000 disability related questions for members of the community. Additionally, in collaboration with Oakland Unified and Alameda Unified School Districts, TheCIL launched the Five pathways to Independence a youth focused initiative aimed to help students with disabilities be successful with their transition into postsecondary life. We've also kicked started TheCIL lifestyle division, launched an assistive technology internet video series Power On, and won a grant to expand our Living Well program to our Spanish speaking Fruitvale office.

In addition to growing membership, we also hope to further engage the larger community through these programs. Every adaptive sporting or technology demo is an open invitation for people with and without disabilities to engage with one another on a common field, enabling them to share experiences and develop communication and social skills while building a network of peers.

In this coming year, we plan to bringing presentations to schools and corporations to present adaptive sports as a team building activity, developing a online forum for technology users to connect users from all over the United States, and deliver our services to the needs of the Spanish speaking population.