(Pictured here is a graphic that reads THANK YOU Colorado! with the logo for COMMUNITY FIRST FOUNDATION COLORADO GIVES DAY, 12.04.18, with the logo artwork of 1st Bank below and the text underneath the logo: Corporate Partner. The bottom text reads: DONATE TUES., DEC. 4 ColoradoGivesDay.org)
Letter from the Executive Director
Dear Members:
Happy New Year!
I cannot believe that 2018 is already over and we are now in the last year of this tumultuous decade. In one more year both CCDC and the ADA will turn 30. We are taking ideas now for what we should do to celebrate this occasion.
I wrote in past editions that we conducted a Listening Tour around the state this summer. If you want to read the report, please click here.
Based on the report, our 2019 legislative priorities will focus on housing and transportation, but we will continue to work on health care, especially mental health care, and other social justice issues. The disability community presented our organizations and priorities to the new Joint Budget Committee on December 11, 2018. To receive a copy of the handouts, please email me at JReiskin@ccdconline.org
So what is CCDC doing in 2019? In addition to our ongoing work that includes our Civil Rights Enforcement Legal Program, Probate Power, Individual and Systems
Advocacy, our plans include:
- We will continue our #Vote4Medicaid public education project.
- We are very excited to begin a four-year grant from The Colorado Health Access Fund of The Denver Foundation to dedicate important new resources to mental health policy advocacy, which we have always done and can now do better. We continue to work with the Accountable Care Collaborative 2.0, especially the part about integrating mental health into the Regional Accountable Entities and promoting stronger client involvement in this important part of the health care infrastructure.
- We were lucky to get a grant from the Adams County Foundation in fall 2018 to provide outreach and individual advocacy services to Adams County residents. We reached over 450 people and hope to be able to get continued funding during 2019 to keep up this work now that we have made so many great contacts.
- We are excited to work with the Community Foundation of Boulder County, which we will feature in a Spotlight in our March edition of our E-Newsletter, to do some targeted outreach to underrepresented immigrants and refugees with disabilities in the greater Boulder area.
- We will continue our very active engagement with the Health Equity Cohort of the Colorado Trust, ending the Phase Three and hope to work on a Phase Four of this important work that has the potential to make a long-term impact on health equity.
- We are excited to continue to grow and improve our advocacy training—the next class begins Feb. 5th and you can enroll here. If you have questions, our Training Manager Angela Nevin will be happy to answer. Our class is available online and in person. We appreciate the support from Caring for Colorado Foundation for our advocacy class and to help us build more online tools…stay tuned for more on that during the next quarter.
- We are excited to improve our communications with a better database and improved strategies with social media thanks to a November 2018 grant from Rose Community Foundation.
- We could not be effective health advocates on many Medicaid policies and assure a client voice on Medicaid issues throughout the long-term services and state plan systems without the generous support of the Colorado Health Foundation.
We have many generous funders and cannot mention every supporter in each newsletter, but we know who you are and are grateful. We are very appreciative for the many gifts we have received from Colorado Gives Day 2018 and your dozens of year-end donations. Every one of them counts and your gifts help us make sure that we enforce policies that say every person matters.
Thank you for your support.
Respectfully,
Julie Reiskin
Executive Director
P.S. Save the Date please for our 2019 ADA Access Awards Luncheon: September 25th! Our keynote speaker will be Dr. Phil Mitchell, CEO of Dispatch Health and CCDC volunteer board member.
(Pictured above is the logo artwork of CCDC ADA Access Awards.)
Colorado Trust 2018-19 Health Equity Learning Series events from CCDC
Great news, CCDC is fortunate to have once again received a 2018-19 grant from The Colorado Trust to support health equity learning in Prowers County through the Trust's Health Equity Learning Series.
Join CCDC and other leaders in health care, education, human services, and government from across the county to live screenings of The Colorado Trust’s Health Equity Learning Series, followed by facilitated discussions about health equity in our communities. An educational program of The Colorado Trust, the Health Equity Learning Series aims to increase knowledge and awareness of health equity through presentations from experts discussing factors that increase disparities and solutions that advance health equity. The learning series brings experts from across different disciplines to discuss factors that increase disparities and solutions that advance health equity.
The Colorado Trust invites you to attend its third Health Equity Learning Series presentation of 2018-19, featuring Taté Walker (they/them)
. When it comes to experiencing violence, Indigenous womxn* face extreme marginalization at the crossroads of several identities and social structures. The combination of identities and oppressions related to sex, gender and race, among other identity/social aspects, are deeply tied to and intensified by the history and ongoing impact of settler colonialism. This takes shape in many dire and underreported ways: The U.S. murder rate for Indigenous womxn in some tribal communities is 10 times the national average; one in three Indigenous womxn will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime; and domestic violence rates are seven times higher for Indigenous womxn than womxn from other demographics.
This presentation by Taté Walker provides critical context to these and other violent realities from cultural, historical, systemic and gender-based viewpoints. You will come away with an understanding of the health inequities experienced by Indigenous womxn due to sexism and colonization, as well as strategies to demand and achieve justice for Indigenous womxn and their communities.
Taté Walker is Lakota and a citizen of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe of South Dakota. They are a banner-waving Two Spirit feminist and Indigenous rights activist, and a published and award-winning storyteller for outlets like
Native People’s Magazine,
Everyday Feminism,
Feminist Humanist Alliance,
Indian Country Today and many more. Their work is also featured in the recently published anthology titled
FIERCE: Essays by and About Dauntless Women. (Nauset Press, 2018). Armed with a master’s degree in administrative science from the University of South Dakota, a bachelor’s degree in English-communications from Fort Lewis College, and black coffee(!), Taté uses their 15 years of experience working for daily newspapers, social justice organizations and tribal education systems to organize students and professionals around issues of critical cultural competency, anti-racism/anti-bias and inclusive community building. Find out more at
www.jtatewalker.com and connect with them on Twitter at
@MissusTWalker.
*"Womxn" is an intentionally-used alternative spelling that rejects patriarchy in language by removing "men" as the root of "women" and that proactively includes transgender womxn, female-assigned genderqueer/gender non-conforming people, as well as cisgender womxn.
Click here for additional details on the 2019 Health Equity Learning Series.
The
CCDC HELS event featuring a free fully-accessible closed caption video of the live January 10th event will be held in spring 2019 (date TBD) in Lamar, Colorado. To receive a Save the Date for the Prowers County community event coming later this spring, please email Kenny Maestas at
kmaestas@ccdconline.org to reserve your spot.
(Pictured here above is Tate Walker (they, them), the speaker for the Jan. 10, 2019 Health Equity Learning Series event at History Colorado in Denver.)
Pictured here on the right of the CCDC marketing banner is Elia Trujillo of Prowers Medical Center at the Nov. 27, 2018 CCDC HELS community event.
Pictured here are CCDC volunteer advocate Don Yoxsimer (center) with two Lamar residents at the Nov. 27, 2018 CCDC HELS community event.