LIVING HOPE WHEELCHAIR ASSOCIATION

Our Quality of Life Promoters program affirms our right to have a life with dignity. We work together and share our resources to make sure each one of our members has the medical supplies he or she needs to live well and with basic dignity. We work together to gain access to resources and services and to change polices that deny us services. We organize to promote laws that respect our rights as workers and immigrants and as persons with disabilities. We do this as families and all this work helps our families stay strong. Our accidents were devastating and destroyed the lives we had, together we create a new community to help each other, we know we are not alone and that makes all the difference.

Many of our activities are oriented to secure our survival as persons with spinal cord injuries and we are clearly aware of the importance that our services and supplies have to affirm the dignity of our members and improve our quality of life. We work in a society that pretends not to see us, we aim to denounce barriers, attitudes and policies that deny us access to resources and services and to announce or commitment to fight for our rights and change policies so that we our rights and the rights of all people with disabilities, all immigrants and all workers are respected.

The intersection of structural racism, anti-immigrant policies, poverty and discrimination against people with disabilities as well as the limited availability of health and social services make the lives of our members a constant challenge.

Our work moves around the following issues and as we move forward we hope to establish each one of them as a more solid program:

Accompaniment and Spirituality
Access to Health Services
Mobility
Communication
Housing
Family Support
Education
Culture and Recreation
Legal Clinic

Having a Spinal Cord injury puts your life at risk. Not having access to services and medical supplies due to policies that punish poverty, immigration status or both represents even a bigger barrier. We face legal and institutional barriers as well as negative attitudes, fear and prejudice towards people with disabilities, migrants and people of color. We affirm our right to have life in abundance, we affirm the right of All People to have All Rights.

Some of our actions in this program are:

Membership and Leadership Development

Advocacy - Policy Campaigns

Metro and Mobility

Immigrant rights

Worker Rights

Disability Rights

Public Education

Research