Welcome to our blog! This is the first post of CAC United. We're a group of advocates who live in Eugene and Springfield, Oregon. Individually, we participate in lots of different activities in our community like work, school, basketball, painting, lesbian choir, and improv theater. We are passionate about working to make our community a better place for people with disabilities.
What is the CAC?
The CAC is the Community Advocacy Council. Our job is to give advice to the Center on Human Development at the University of Oregon. The CHD is part of a network of university centers in every state in the US that focuses on developmental disabilities. These centers are required as part of the federal DD Act of 1975.
We give the CHD advice on what we think their goals should be. Their goals have to be about improving the lives of people with developmental disabilities, and they take the form of research, outreach, training, and education. We also do advocacy that reaches our towns, our state, and the whole country.
Here are some of our success stories from the past couple of years:
- We attended a town hall meeting with Oregon state legislators in Eugene to listen and ask questions about housing and other topics affecting people with disabilities.
- We attended an Oregon legislative budget committee public hearing wearing our bright yellow T-shirts to advocate for funding for Developmental Disabilities Services!
- We advised the CHD on its new AbleFind app to help people find disability-related resources in their community.
- We participated in the Oregon Council on Developmental Disabilities Facebook campaign for "Medicaid for All."
- We encountered accessibility barriers when we visited a library on the UO campus and advocated successfully for changes there.
Stay Tuned
We are committed to learning what we can about disabilities and disability rights and sharing it with you because knowledge is power! In our future blog posts, you can expect to find information on topics from human interest to science and beyond. We plan to write posts quarterly.
In the meantime, if you'd like to learn more about the CAC, visit our page on the CHD website, or visit our CAC Facebook page.