APRIL REED: I was thinking about one of our mentors went through this training with their wife.

And when they got to him to say you know, that he said I don't have a disability.

And I had to kind of smile because he's sitting there with two hearing aids and I know he has diabetes.

So he went through the training and had some of these conversations and so now with the group he's like well my wife's the mentor but I also have a disability.

He really owns it now.

In the beginning I was like yes you do, but he was thinking about her, not him.

He didn't identify as a person with a disability.

AMINA KRUCK: Who proudly sent us a little article for our newsletter about how he got his homeowners association to put a lift on his pool recently which anybody dealt with those home associations, how hard they are to do anything.

APRIL REED: What I love about the disability liberation piece too is that a lot of times when we talk about barriers for people with disabilities, it's that isolation piece.

When we talk about barriers for being advocates.

It's about they're in their own world.

They don't connect to a world of other people with disabilities.

So when you get people in disability liberation, it forces them to look at themselves, look at the stereotypes they have about others and it really starts a process of thinking about, I'm not isolated.

This isn't just happening to me.

This is a whole system.

A whole world that I need to be aware of and it really does move people into thinking about I got to care about this because if I want to get better and help other people get better, if I want to change the world, I have to know this stuff and I've got to get involved as an advocate.

And that's where we really see people getting super excited about advocacy and feeling empowered just because they've connected how it affects them but also how it affects everybody else around them.

AMINA KRUCK: And a good advocate will always do something for somebody else before they do it for themselves, right? 

APRIL REED: So just as a wrapup today, I think some of these are kind of obvious but we wanted to spend a minute to highlight them.

For our peer mentors, when we're asking them why are you doing this, what's the benefit for you? They always talk about I get to give back.

I'm doing something for somebody else, I'm not having it done for me.

I get to be the one who is supporting somebody.

I get to help somebody else.

I feel productive.

I feel needed.

They talk about I feel more comfortable talking about my disability.

I feel more comfortable advocating for myself because I have to do it.

I have to do it for my mentee, I've got to do it for myself.

I've got to be that good role model.

We have them tell us you know it increased my knowledge of community resources.

I understand what's in the community, what's available.

I understand what's not available.

What we mean.

They feel more confident about their leadership skills.

And a lot of them do say, you know, that this helped me set new personal goals for where I wanted to go in my own life.

So it's not unusual for us to have somebody who mentors for a while and gets excited and goes back and goes to school or starts another volunteer job or gets a job because it kind of reinvigorates them doing this work.

The other benefit is that to the mentees, they don't have to reinvent the wheel.

They don't have to figure it out on their own.

They can tap in to somebody else's knowledge and their years of experience.

So, if I've got somebody who has lived with their disability for a couple years, man, let me get them with somebody who has to be 30 years and can share and teach and explain resources.

They don't have to do it on their own and that's a very hopeful thing.

That's a wonderful place for somebody to be coming you know to us knowing that hey, I can get support, I can get information.

I can get resources.

I can start achieving my independent living goals.

And we really see people how that increases their self-esteem and increases their self-confidence and we see them moving forward after that relationship and really identifying new goals they want to take on for themselves.

AMINA KRUCK: It also expands the reach of the center into the community and some of you talked about that in the small group work today.

Sharing knowledge, expertise, experiences, they can speak about the center and market and recruit within their personal networks that IL council we had which has some peer mentors in it, they wanted them one of them was so grateful for what he got back, he talked them in to he talked our CEO into donating a couple hundred dollars and they created baseball hats and T-shirts that say thanks to ABIL I'm able or some saying like that just so they can sell them and have them and do it.

They want us to have billboards on all the busses and everything, right? Now that they realize what it's meant in their life.

And they can go with us as we've said out when we do talks in the community.

Helping other programs so that more are served.

Never enough and we send staff and expanding our advocacy network.

And they often go into their community like we said.

So Don who was talking who was the chair user that said that that he had gotten peer mentoring when he went through rehab and near the end he said he had been one of the first peer mentors at ABIL and he was.

And then you know, he had so when I met him, he was a college student.

He graduated in, got a degree but he couldn't work because if he worked, he would make too much money to get out of bed because of our Medicaid rules and he needed attendant care.

So then he was one of our poster boys when we were advocating for the Medicaid buy-in program and then by the time that went through, he had a second degree and then he came to work for us going to rehab centers and working with peer mentors.

So we have several staff that started out as peer mentors.

And then they get jobs in other areas, they go on to get education so they call us and say I have to quit because I'm going back to school.

Finding employment.

The most important thing are all of these things.

Recruitment.

We did that circle where do you start.

Recruitment is important, peer mentor qualifications is important.

Training is important, supervision is important.

Evaluation is important and recognition is important.

And then I handwrote in you know, your volunteer coordinator is important.

So these are all the components of a good program.

And if you remember, April was recommending get your like you know, you have all these, but what would you call what you said they needed to have that you know, there are forms and they're structured together first but that's not on the list.

APRIL REED: I would call it policies and procedures.

AMINA KRUCK: Policies and procedures.

We didn't even put that on the list we take it so for granted but that's also a very good place to start.

And you could start with ours that you mixed and matched and then change them.

Adapt them to what you really need.

But it gets you something started and it will help you think about how to grow your program if you start with those first.

So -- that's it, right?