As part of Trickle Up’s Stronger Voices, Sustainable Livelihoods project, Trickle Up participants in Mali annually celebrate the UN-sponsored International Day for People with Disabilities. Click the picture to see more!
Two years ago while researching new job opportunities, I knew I wanted to try something different.  But I also knew that I wanted to stay inside the nonprofit arena and continue doing work that would help people—that would make me excited to get up and go to work each morning.
Someone I’d worked with for years in the industry suggested I check out an interesting little nonprofit called Trickle Up.  When she said they may even have an opening for the same type of fundraising I’d done over the course of my twelve-year nonprofit career, I was intrigued.  I hopped online immediately, eager to learn more.
Darting around Trickle Up’s website, however, my initial feeling was doubt.  An international organization focused on helping women and families lift themselves out of extreme poverty?  How would this place be a good fit for me?  My whole career had been working on domestic issues.  I hadn’t even ever traveled to the developing world.  Plus, the organization was focused on areas that were new to me: microenterprise work, livelihoods development, hunger and health.  How would this be a good fit for my background in urban education and community development?
Just then, a fascinating statistic—at least to me—jumped right off my screen and captured my interest:
12% of Trickle Up’s participants worldwide were “people with disabilities,” otherwise known in nonprofit land as “PWDs.”  12%!
"Yes, I can do productive things. I have my hands and my mind. No matter the type of disability you have, you can work, you can do productive things." ~Antonio Cua Mendoza, participant from Guatemala
I kept reading.  I thought about my own father and his 30+ years battle with Multiple Sclerosis, which, thanks to his and my mother’s amazing strength and attitude, he has fought for the vast majority of my life and the majority of his adult life.  I thought about what my family’s life would have been like if my father hadn’t been able to start his small insurance business as an independent broker working out of the lower level of our home when he first got sick in 1980, and how hard it would’ve been for my family to make ends meet and earn a living without my father having his work, his livelihood.  Without him having that chance to do work that he loved, that was meaningful, that gave his life purpose.
Then I thought about how much harder our family’s life would have been if we lived in a remote village in Northeastern India; or in the highlands of Guatemala miles away from markets or hospitals; or in the crackling hot deserts of Sub-Saharan West Africa, places where Trickle Up works instead of where I grew up in the cushy suburbs of Central Massachusetts.  As I kept reading, I learned more about the families Trickle Up works to help in these three regions of the world, families headed by “PWDs” and the people who care for them, just like my Dad and Mom.  I was impressed that Trickle Up understood that disabled people are actually some of the most resilient, talented, hard-working people on earth, who realize that life itself is just a test of our ability to face adversities when they come our way and do everything we can to beat them.  And I knew that a place that understood this about PWDs was exactly the kind of place I wanted to work.
I sat down and wrote my cover letter immediately.
Since I started working here, I have traveled to India with Trickle Up and have seen for myself the courage and determination PWDs have when they are given the chance to better their lives. However, I’ve also noticed that this is a fact that has not translated into action by governments and even other nonprofits. Recently for example, the World Health Organization (WHO) published the “first ever” World Disability Report, which suggests that more than 15% of the world’s population experience disabilities, up from 10% since the 1970s when the last estimate was made… Wait, the last estimate was made 40 years ago? As Duncan Greene, an Oxfam blogger put it, “Now that’s what I call neglect.”
There’s clearly still a long way to go: From countering the stigma PWDs face in their own communities, all the way up to advocating for this underserved population. What I’ve learned at Trickle Up over the past two years is something I wish more people understood: that people with disabilities are the same, as you or I, no matter how remote the villages or regions in which they live, no matter their nationality or religion. Just like my father, all every person in the world wants is to provide for themselves and their families. To be inspired. To live a full and dignified life.