‘Changing the world’

When Ailsa Wonnacott, executive director of the Association for Community Living, recently made her annual appeal for funding to the Boulder County Commissioners, she brought along a powerful message.

In her office in rural Longmont, Wonnacott keeps the cardboard sign she brought to that meeting. On one side, her team created colorful images of all the work ACL does to advocate on behalf of children and adults who live with developmental disabilities, ranging from training young parents to fostering changes in public policy.

On the other side was a coarse image of a tiny, rundown building behind a chain-link fence. Earlier this year, the association discovered 10 people with disabilities living in the studio-size outbuilding, another living in a shed outside, and a couple in a makeshift tent.

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“This is not a refugee camp,” Wonnacott said. “That is downtown Longmont last Thursday afternoon. For some people, the only safety net is us, and that’s only if we can find them.”

At its heart, the association is dedicated to ensuring that all members of the communities in Boulder and Broomfield counties are able to live, work and participate fully in all aspects of community life. It began as a grassroots movement supported by Boulder parents in the early 1960s that grew into the local chapter of the community-based organization The Arc. This year, the association celebrates its 50th anniversary.

“This movement has grown from a few parents meeting in a living room to being an organization that helps change the world,” Wonnacott said. “But of course, as we change the world, the world changes in all kinds of ways that we can’t predict.”

In fact, those changes represent serious obstacles to the people her organization serves. While access to public education has improved over the decades, other challenges have exploded in the past five years.

Among these hurdles are a crisis in funding for adult services, a tsunami of aging caregivers for children with disabilities, increased rates of autism spectrum conditions, protracted wait times to access services, and potentially devastating cuts in funding for elementary and secondary education.

“Cuts in education impact students without disabilities significantly, but they impact students with disabilities catastrophically,” Wonnacott said. “If there are fewer adults in a school, students will not have the support they need to attend general education classes, let along benefit from individualized help.”

The agency, a 501(c)3 nonprofit, partners extensively with school districts in Boulder and Broomfield counties and with other service providers such as the Boulder-based Community Centered Board, better known as Imagine! With just eight staff members and some 200 volunteers, the association provided advocacy, referrals and training to more than 1,200 people with disabilities and their families in 2011.

The community is vital to the agency’s financial success. With a budget around $650,000, fully half of the association’s budget comes from the funds provided through Arc Thrift Stores throughout the state.

“The Arc Thrift Stores are absolutely key to our survival. We always tell people to please buy there, and donate there,” Wonnacott said.

One of the association’s clients was able to rebuild from homelessness by working in one of the thrift stores and securing a donated vehicle from Arc.

The community can help support the association’s work in other ways as well. The nonprofit offers membership ranging from $2 for people with disabilities to $500 for a lifetime membership, and welcomes individual donations. The organization also values its many volunteers. Opportunities range from helping at the office with training and events all the way to more intensive advocacy efforts.

“We need as many volunteers as we can get,´ said Kristine Johnson, training and events coordinator. “We’re just getting our volunteer advocate program off the ground to foster friendships and activities between volunteers and people with disabilities. These volunteers truly contribute to social change as part of a team of dedicated, compassionate individuals.”

The people at the association also work to change public perceptions of people with disabilities.

“People with disabilities are not passive recipients of care or a drain on public dollars,” Wonnacott said. “They are active, contributing members of our community. The degree to which we can provide the appropriate and necessary support, the more we benefit as a community.”

The association’s goals are not about creating dependency but instead helping families, caregivers and people living with developmental disabilities to foster confidence in their own ability to advocate for themselves, and to promote self-sufficiency.

“I think it’s really important for people here to understand that we’re a human rights organization,” Wonnacott said. “We have a long way to go in protecting the civil rights of people with disabilities. The association is often the only organization that stands between the happy, healthy and safe life a person should be leaving, and living in a makeshift refugee camp. We get people to the table and ensure they are given the opportunity to speak. When they cannot, we will speak for them.”