By Bill Gaventa

This last weekend saw one of the most popular service events in Waco, the Really Big Fishing Event for very Special People. The pictures in the WacoTrib were great as was the effort and support put in by so many people and organizations in the Waco area”.  But there is a “catch” here (so to speak) and one that is not meant to criticize the event at all. In fact, it is a positive illustration of the very point I wish to make.

The day of fun and service drew together people who often move in very separate worlds. One of the biggest issues for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, as well as people with other disabilities, is the fact that social, cultural, and architectural barriers often limit their opportunities to participate fully in the kinds of activities many of us take for granted. On the other hand, many people we might call “non-disabled” don’t see or interact with people with disabilities on a regular basis, sometimes because the services and supports for them can separate them from typical settings, or because they stay at home with nothing meaningful to do.

Thus, we end up in a world where people who labeled “disabled” are often seen in one conceptual box, and people labeled “normal” are in another. The problem with these kind of labels is they take on far too much power by seeing a person only by one dimension of their lives. That’s not just a problem here: think now-a-days about political labels, racial labels, cultural labels, religious labels, sexual labels…the list can go on and on. Those labels prejudice what we see, because they fill a whole backpack of assumptions and expectations that we think are true about another person even before we know them. In her famous TED Talk, Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Adichie calls it “the danger of a single story.”  Every one of us has experienced that from other people in a way that does not feel right or true to who we are.

Labels put people in boxes in the shelves of our minds. What we need, in so many ways, are bigger boxes into which two boxes labeled differently can fit.  Hence the Really Big Fishing Event for Very Special People. The bigger box was fishing, an activity that people from all kinds of backgrounds enjoy. In fact, for avid fishermen and fisherwomen, the fact that some other people may love fishing but never have a chance to go fishing is the real tragedy or disability, not the other kinds of labels they may wear.

The potential power of this annual Saturday event might also lead to other opportunities for people who love fishing to find other ways to help people with disabilities who also love fishing to have more opportunities to do so. Not in big events, but rather in small boats, from the river bank, from the dock, opportunities where the fishing “box” helps tackle the stereotypes and fears we may have, and where people then build relationships and friendships that mess up our smaller boxes and more rigid labels.

There are organizations around Waco making great strides in building those bigger boxes. Sports brings people together with many levels of ability in Special Olympics and No Limitations Athletics. The Arc of McLennan County uses country music, barbecue and a raffle auction to bring together people in the community who support individuals and families. The Autism Walk on Saturday, April 8 does the same as does art in several venues and programs.  Join the Pride, an event on April 23, uses the great Cameron Park Zoo to do the same, as well as to celebrate people of all abilities at a zoo with a great reputation for its work in support of animals with one form of disability or another.  The Waco Mayor’s Committee on Disabilities coordinates this upcoming event with sponsors who help the day to be free for people with disabilities and their families. Volunteers are both needed and welcome.

The events are all inspiring not only because of the commitment and excitement that runs rampant but also because they find bigger boxes into which we all fit.  They are doubly inspiring if we all look for ways this can happen in everyday lives. So rather than seeing people with differences as labeled boxes on a shelf, every time we see someone as “other,” or “not like me,” could we not ask ourselves: “Gee, I wonder what bigger box we could both fit into.”  They are not hard to find and not hard to build.

All we must do is start the conversation, reach beyond the boxes in which might find ourselves, introduce yourself, and ask questions about who they are, what they like to do, and the dreams they have.  Ronald Reagan first designated March as National Developmental Disabilities Month. If you want to do something in March, any of these organizations can help you. But perhaps you already know some individuals or families where you can start. There is no telling how many labels (and bigger boxes) you will find that you share in common with someone sitting on the shelf with you.

Bill Gaventa is an ordained Baptist minister currently serving as the Director of the Summer Institute on Theology and Disability and the national Collaborative on Faith and Disability. . Bill’s pastoral career has been in a variety of roles at the intersections of faith and disability, including community supports with people with disabilities, training for clergy, seminarians and community services staff, aging and end of life/grief issues in intellectual and developmental disabilities, cultural competence, and community building. He is currently serving as the President of American Association of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities for 2016-2017.  He and his wife Beverly moved to Waco in 2013 where she serves as Professor of New Testament Interpretation at Baylor University.  In Waco, Bill serves on the Mayor’s Committee on Disabilities, the Board of the Arc of McLennan County, and the Professional Network Advisory Committee of the Heart of Texas Region MH/MR Center. You can email Bill at [email protected].

The Act Locally Waco blog publishes posts with a connection to these aspirations for Waco. If you are interested in writing for the Act Locally Waco Blog, please email [email protected] for more information.

By Courtney Restivo Wollard

As a follow up to a previous healthy blog post, I wanted to highlight one of the partners in the Healthiest Cities and Counties Challenge (HCCC) – The CenTex Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

Throughout the years, the Chamber has hosted free family funfests and women’s conferences during the month of February. This year, the event will focus on empowering women’s health, heart, soul, family, and home.  It’s called the Hearts & Homes Ladies’ Conference. The event will include several vendor booths to provide information on resources to the community including career building and home buying assistance, home maintenance tips, and a wellness zone plus door prizes! Lunch and snacks will also be provided. Something new this year that the Chamber will offer as a partner in the HCCC will be providing a healthy traditional Hispanic meal cooking demonstration and food sampling during the event.

If you didn’t catch the previous blog about the Healthiest Cities and Counties Challenge, I will briefly describe its importance for our community. This is a national challenge consisting of 50 other communities (Waco-McLennan County included) all working to improve the health of their residents in many different ways. Communities could choose to improve on one of five metrics including community safety, built environment, social/economic factors, environmental factors, and healthy behaviors. Some communities are focusing on improving asthma rates for children, others are working to prohibit smoking in vehicles with children, some working to improve physical activity opportunities, and some are working on improving wastewater management. Waco-McLennan County will be working on the healthy behaviors metric more specifically increasing healthier eating and consumption of fruits and vegetables. The top communities at the end of the two year challenge (which began October 2016) that show an improvement in their metrics compared to baseline data submitted could win prize money for the community between $25,000 and $250,000 for our community tier.

All of that to say, it is important that residents know how to cook meals in a healthier way and learn how to incorporate more fruits and vegetables into their daily diet. That is where our partner, the CenTex Hispanic Chamber of Commerce comes in. They will be hosting three healthy traditional Hispanic meal cooking demos and samplings throughout the two year challenge in order to educate community members on cooking their favorite comfort foods in a healthy way and in a way that tastes great. The Hearts & Homes Ladies’ Conference is where the first of the three cooking demos will occur. We are very grateful to have the Chamber join in this fun and healthy challenge and we challenge you to eat more fruits and veggies! Be sure to attend the event on February 25^th 2017 at the Waco Convention Center in McLennan Hall from 10am-3pm so you can be a part of the Healthiest Cities and Counties Challenge!

Courtney Restivo Wollard is a lifelong Waco resident who works as Public Health Planner at the Waco-McLennan County Public Health District and serves as Chair for Live Well Waco, the group working to decrease obesity rates under the Prosper Waco Health Committee Initiative. She is also an alumnus of the Waco Foundation LeadershipPLENTY Institute. Courtney graduated with her Masters of Public Health from Baylor University and right away began her career as a health advocate. She is married to Kyle, with whom she has two fur babies – a Chihuahua and a Labrador. Courtney hopes to continue to create healthier environments for McLennan County residents.

The Act Locally Waco blog publishes posts with a connection to these aspirations for Waco. If you are interested in writing for the Act Locally Waco Blog, please email [email protected] for more information.

By Janessa Blythe

When I was a kid, my parents placed a bookshelf next to my room and my brother’s room. Every night, we’d pick a book, pick a parent, and spend a little time in another world. I remember always reading Amelia Bedelia with my dad, fairy books with my mom, and Harry Potter with the whole family.

Because that was all I had ever known, I assumed that most children grew up in households that emphasized reading daily.

In the fall of 2015, I ran a small book drive as a part of a course I was taking at Baylor. I knew that children from lower-income households probably had fewer books than their more affluent peers, but did not realize how great that difference was. The books we collected were given to some of the children at Estella Maxey Public Housing Complex here in Waco. When I delivered the books, I heard over and over again from the volunteers, “These kids just don’t have books at home.”

It turns out that the research shows that children from low-income households tend to lack access to books, and have few books in their homes. The US Department of Education found that 61% of low-income families have no books at all in their homes (US Dept. of Education, 1996). One example of this is low-income neighborhood in Philadelphia, where the University of Michigan found that the ratio was 1 book for every 300 children (Neuman and Celano, 2001).

Lack of book access is a huge issue for many of the children in our country, and it affects them every day both in an out of the classroom. According to the Education Equality Index, 60% of students in Texas are eligible for free and reduced lunch. The socioeconomic status of these children indicates that they more than likely lack access to books.

This is a problem because not all learning happens at school; children are only there about 7 hours a day, and they are only in school 9-10 months each year. This becomes an issue for lower-income students, because they lack learning resources at home. A study by the RAND Corporation about the “summer slide” found that “results in reading show that middle-income students maintained achievement levels over the summer while high-income students improved and low-income students lost ground” (RAND, 2011). Low-income students lose ground because they have fewer opportunities to practice their reading, or improve their reading when they are not in school.

There are a number of reasons for the lack of books in low-income households.  There are libraries, but they are often far away and parent’s either don’t take their children, or don’t know that they should take their children regularly. School libraries often don’t allow books to be taken home, and are often unavailable in the summer. Finally, books are expensive and are difficult for low-income parents to afford.

When children from lower-income households go home, they don’t have the resources they would need to continue learning.

Scholastic’s Family and Community Engagement Research Compendium from 2013 puts the argument for book access succinctly:

• Children from less affluent families do not perform as well on achievement tests compared with children of more affluent families.
• These gaps related to families’ socioeconomic status are present even before children enter school.
• Reading to young children is related to stronger subsequent academic achievement.
• Children in low-income families have access to fewer reading materials than children of middle- and upper-income families.

Their conclusion is that “the only behavior measure that correlates significantly with reading scores is the number of books in the home,” and that “the most successful way to improve the reading achievement of low-income children is to increase their access to print” (Scholastic FACE, 2013).

We spend millions of dollars each year on education in America, but not all learning happens at school. Mortimer J. Adler once said that “the principle cause of the learning that occurs in a student is the activity of the student’s own mind.” When a child picks up a book, and struggles to understand what the letters on the page are communicating, that child activates his or her mind and is learning. This learning is unaided by a teacher, but it is learning all the same.

If a child has no books in their home, in the many hours they spend there, there is no prospect of picking up a book and learning to learn.

Janessa Blythe is a junior at Baylor University originally from Colorado Springs, CO.  She is studying Great Texts, Political Science, and Classics in the University Scholars Program, and anticipates attending law school when she graduates in May of 2018. She hopes to eventually work in education policy. In her free time, Janessa loves to spend her time outside, especially on the trails in Cameron Park.

The Act Locally Waco blog publishes posts with a connection to these aspirations for Waco. If you are interested in writing for the Act Locally Waco Blog, please email [email protected] for more information.