Welcome

Our Mission

Citizen Advocacy initiates voluntary one-to-one relationships between a person with a disability and someone else from their community who has corresponding qualities and resources. This relationship is initiated by a Citizen Advocacy coordinator, and advocates are generally asked to build a personal relationship with their partner, and also to take action on their partner’s behalf.

These ‘matches’ are a means to promote, protect and defend the welfare and interests of, and justice for, people with mental, physical and/or emotional disabilities who are impaired in competence and either diminished in status or seriously physically and socially isolated.

Citizen Advocacy is distinctive in two fundamental ways:

• It is completely based on the belief in the power and competence of the ordinary citizen. It depends on the ability of individuals to care and connect to others and to make lifelong commitments to step in and sometimes work extremely hard for and with someone they would not ordinarily meet;
• and, Citizen Advocacy is deeply grounded in the idea that people with disabilities are people – not with “special needs” but simply people of shared common humanity, who may, like all of us, have problems particular to themselves. Their most pressing needs – for, home, education, work, daily life with meaning, love, and relationship – are universal truths.

Our Vision

A world in which each life is valued, protected, and celebrated for its uniqueness through a vested relationship.

Our Principles

• Advocate Independence: Each Citizen Advocacy relationship is freely given. Each citizen advocate is independent of the citizen advocacy office, of human services, and even of his/her advocacy partner’s family…loyalty is to the individual person…this allows the advocate to speak out and act with freedom and clarity.
• Clarity of Staff Function: Citizen Advocacy coordinators do not act as advocates, and the program does not engage in other forms of advocacy.
• Program Independence: The Citizen Advocacy office maintains its independence from other human service organizations to help ensure that advocates will not have conflicts of interests.
• Diversity of Relationships: The range of advocate roles and the nature of advocacy relationships are very diverse. Advocates choose, together with their partner, the direction and content of their relationship. Citizen Advocacy coordinators orient and support the advocates in these choices.
• Positive Imagery: The advocacy office strives to be a model of positive interpretations and images of people with disabilities.

 

 

 

“There is no safety net that can bear the weight of human indifference, and I have yet to encounter a safety net of laws, rules, regulation and policies that was any stronger than a single concerned and engaged person, standing shoulder to shoulder with a person, navigating the daily challenges of life in the community.”

Charles Sundram, Attorney