Past Conferences

Background information about Past Conferences

Prior to hosting our first conference, the collective experiences of the organizations, advocates and agencies revealed that Asian and Pacific Islanders with disabilities are one of the most difficult populations to identify and reach.

This is in large part due to cultural, religious and language barriers. There are social, cultural and religious stigma associated with Asian and Pacific Islanders with disabilities, that people with disabilities should be kept out of the public view, are born as a way of punishing their family for past bad deeds, are contagious, and are a negative reflection on their families. Over laden upon these stigma are the language barriers found in many immigrant families.

As a result, individuals with disabilities who end up being served by a community based organization are rare, and those served by a mainstream agency even rarer.

To achieve any meaningful impact, we realized that the focus of our past conferences had to be from the consumer up: we realized that it would not be effective to presume to know what consumers and their families wanted to hear. As a result, we designed our conferences from the standpoint of the consumers and families —what issues have they faced, what areas do they want to learn more about, how can we identify strategies to help the consumers and their families tap into existing resources and develop new ones.