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Alliance for Full Participation Summit generates inclusion agenda

More than 1,200 self-advocates, families, service providers, researchers, and public policy experts gathered in Washington not long ago to create an action agenda to benefit people with intellectual disabilities. Their goal: to change their vision of a world where people with developmental disabilities realize the promise of integration, productivity, independence, and quality of life choices into a working reality.

Exciting plenary sessions treated participants to addresses by such luminaries as civil rights activists Martin Luther King III, organizational specialist Dr. Margaret Wheatley, and Stamford Symphony Conductor Roger Nierenberg. Frank Sesno of CNN led a lively Town Hall session featuring engaging dialogue and interactive debate; attendees employed electronic polling machines in crafting an action agenda for the future.

Small-group sessions focused on leadership, community membership, and self-determination along with enhancing the quality of supports and services. These highlighted models of innovation and practice, bringing new ways of thinking about existing challenges.

CQL is one of the founding members of the Alliance for Full Participation, which takes for its mission “To dream, plan, work, mobilize and organize people with developmental disabilities, their families, and supporting communities and organizations to make the promise of integration, productivity, independence and quality of life a reality in policy and practice.”