As a part of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network’s 2024 gala, we have the honor to share and uplift our remarkable awardees’ words and their service to the self-advocacy and disability community. We will be sharing their remarks for the first few months of 2025.
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Massachusetts Advocates Standing Strong just celebrated its 26th anniversary of advocacy for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Along with creating and participating in events like conferences, outings to legislative events, and monthly regional Zoom meetings to build connection and community, we also offer training courses like Awareness and Action (A&A) and the Self Advocate Leadership Series (SALS). A&A helps people with I/DD to feel confident in recognizing, responding to, and reporting abuse in all of its forms. SALS helps teach soft skills in order to be more effective in communication, teamwork, and managing feelings, but also teaches about concepts like disability laws to be aware of.
Some of our self advocates at MASS participated in the creation of the R3 App, developed by the Disabled Persons Protection Commission (DPPC), which will help people across the country with I/DD report abuse. We also work with the Office of Violence Against Women (OVW) in order to help create materials for other organizations that are in plain language for disabled victims of abuse, so that they feel more empowered in understanding what resources they need after experiencing sexual abuse.
In October of 2004, Pauline Bosma founded the Rainbow Group with MASS, which offers a supportive community space for people with I/DD that also identify as LGBTQ+. With 2024 being her 20th anniversary of doing this work, she had an award created in her name, which will be given to future recipients in the following years. She hosts monthly Zoom meetings on the last Tuesday of every month, and does numerous speaking engagements for universities, other nonprofits, and companies every year, helping others understand the unique intersection of having I/DD and also being a part of the LGBTQ+ community. She has created a network of similar Rainbow Groups throughout the country, and has even connected with groups in the UK and Australia!
Some notable presentations that Pauline has given this year were for Parent to Parent of New York State, the San Andreas Regional Center in California, and Boston University. In spring of 2025, Pauline will also be giving a presentation at MIT as well! PtoPNYS is a small nonprofit in New York that focuses on families raising children and teens with I/DD. They reached out to us because they were gradually receiving more questions from parents about how to support their children that were identifying as LGBTQ+, and they did not have any resources to give to the parents. They found the Rainbow Guidebook that Pauline helped create, and reached out to us for more insight. SARC offers case management and other services for people with disabilities, and they reached out to us for similar reasons as well; they were getting an increasing number of questions from clients about resources for those who are LGBTQ+, so they connected with us for more information.
MASS has also been a major supporter of the Massachusetts Supported Decision-Making Bill (H.4949), which would allow for much more independence for certain adults with I/DD, because many are in highly-restrictive legal guardianships that don’t allow them to make their own decisions in various aspects of their lives. While MASS is small, it works hard to make an impact on the individuals it serves, which has ripple effects for their families and communities. In the near future, we hope to start scheduling more regular meetings at the State House, and connecting even further with our community to help more people become their own self-advocates.
Thank you again so much for originally reaching out to us about our Rainbow Group winning the “Creating Community Together Award”. It means so much to be recognized for the advocacy we do.