Empowering Disabled Adults Through Community: Weekend Retreat at Easterseals Massachusetts

Last month, Easterseals Massachusetts celebrated its annual mentorship retreat for young adults with disabilities. The Empowering You 2024 Mentorship Retreat featured activities and events like workshops emphasizing community building, handcrafted art, games, and several guest speakers. For disabled individuals living in Massachusetts, this annual event encouraged embracing your disabled identity, building support throughout your community, and, more importantly, the capability to confidently and comfortably empower oneself.

Empowering You is the culmination of efforts from Easterseals Massachusetts’ mentorship programs Thrive and Brothers Against Discrimination (B.A.D). While Thrive is specifically for disabled young women, and B.A.D for young men, both groups seek to help disabled members promote and advocate for themselves as confident disabled members of society. I spoke with Easterseals Massachusetts Youth Program Manager, Desi Forte, who explored this year’s mentorship retreat theme and its varying activities, the importance of accommodating numerous disabilities, and her hopes for the future.

What Is Empowering You?

Confidence and self-worth are important tools for any individual. Yet, for disabled people that may struggle to feel welcome in a society that can still pose numerous inaccessible barriers, as well as general notions of ableism, empowerment is crucial for daily living. While Thrive and B.A.D regularly develop programs to create and refine self-help skills, Forte explains it was important to have the annual retreat focus on the overall theme of empowerment.

“The focus of the program was really around empowering people with disabilities by creating these communities,” Forte said. “With the theme of Empowering You, we were trying to find an all-encompassing theme that was broad in terms of scope of what we could cover. Really emphasizing the point around empowerment because that’s what these programs were built to do.”

The annual mentorship retreat took place over a weekend to allow attendees time to engage with activities. Forte notes that the Friday and Saturday were primarily reserved for members of B.A.D, while Thrive members met on Saturday and Sunday, with intentional overlap on Saturday for both groups to connect with one another. Forte explains that approximately 18 attendees within each program stayed for the event, with ages ranging from 15 to adults in their 50s. Yet, despite the vast differences in age, the event provided activities for all to enjoy.

“There were activities around the theme of empowerment,” she said. “There was an art activity where individuals created prints just showing what empowerment means to them. There were speakers around leadership within the disability community and beyond, and how they can be leaders in their lives. There was a lot of structured down-time as a way for these community members to connect with one another to build organic mentoring and empowering relationships from the different generational communities being able to connect with one another.”

Empowering Through Care

Each annual mentorship retreat brings attendees to new locations, and Empowering You was no different. Hosted at Bridgewater State University, members and volunteers were given access to the facilities of the college campus, including residential halls. While this was a great way to directly bring disabled individuals into local communities, it also provided its own logistical challenges.

For many disabled people, traveling, and especially staying overnight, can be a complex process. From transferring medical equipment to extensive care regimes, many disabled individuals do not have the luxury to temporarily bring their care to other areas. Thankfully, Forte notes that the event was able to comfortably and successfully accommodate everyone.

“One of the strongest positive outcomes we always see, is that because this was an overnight event, we were able to support [Personal Care Assistant] needs if that’s something participants need to be involved,” she said. “[We also provide] other needs they may have that may be a barrier for them to participate in other overnight events. Just getting a chance to be overnight, away from their everyday environment, is always a strong part of this program.”

Some attendees, as Forte explains, are experiencing their first overnight event. And for others, these retreats are something to look forward to annually, allowing disabled individuals to connect with peers, as well as comfortably and confidently spend significant time away from their home environment. Forte notes that one of the most common pieces of feedback after each event is the joy with being able to stay overnight. “The feedback that we’ve gotten many, many times, and this year especially, is just being able to be in the space is something that those involved don’t get the opportunity to do very often.”

Moving Forward

Empowering You was not the only event available this year. Forte notes that Easterseals Massachusetts consistently offers numerous events and retreats, both virtually and physically, for disabled attendees and mentors alike. For disabled individuals, these create opportunities to build not only self-confidence, but a sense of community, something crucial for marginalized groups like disabled people. And as each event draws to a close, Forte is hopeful that they will continue with new themes and places.

“The hopes for future events are to just keep them going and to keep them growing,” she said. “To be able to keep doing these and offering these opportunities. The only concerns are always around funding and making sure that that’s available to support these programs, and to support these opportunities.”

Empowering You more than embraced its theme. The intersections of different mentorship groups, community building, and creating necessary tools to empower oneself were felt across the college campus. For disabled individuals, finding a sense of belonging internally, as well as through a community, are crucial components of long-term care. Without community, disabled people may struggle to engage within a traditionally nondisabled society. And while these events continue, self-empowerment and connecting with others will provide even more opportunities for disabled individuals to develop a sense of belonging. And as Forte explains, these retreats and events are integral to the disabled community.

“As a person with a disability myself, I completely understand firsthand what being involved in these programs means,” she said. “And really, what it means for me to be able to give back to this community that means so much to me.”

To learn more about Easterseals Massachusetts, please visit their website. 

Written by Grant Stoner.