The fourth Movin’ On in Montana Summer Camp brought together eleven Montana high school students and recent graduates with disabilities to experience college life at the University of Montana. This July, students from Great Falls, Helena, Butte, Frenchtown, Cascade and Missoula slept in dorms, ate on campus, attended college lectures, learned about University resources, took the city bus to an Osprey baseball game and ended the week rafting down the Bitterroot river.  

In the fall of 2018, the Rural Institute and Summit Independent Living hosted Nguyen Thi Van, a Mansfield Center Fellow from Vietnam, who was visiting Missoula as part of the Professional Fellows Program.

This spring, Bronwyn Troutman, Community Living Specialist at Summit Independent Living in Missoula, was selected as an outbound YSEALI (Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative) Fellow through the Mansfield Center at the University of Montana. Bronwyn and Anna-Margaret Goldman, director of MonTECH, traveled to Vietnam to further the collaboration and partnership between the Rural Institute, Summit Independent Living Center, and the organizations associated with Ms. Nguyen.

We are excited to share the following post by Bronwyn Troutman about her trip to Vietnam.

Anna-Margaret Goldman and Kaitlin Fertaly of the Rural Institute, and Amy Capolupo of Disability Services for Students at the University of Montana (UM), in partnership with the University of Colorado Boulder (CU), competed for and were awarded funding to host 19 higher education professionals from 5 Egyptian public universities.

The purpose of the 10-day day study tour is to strengthen the capacity of Egyptian university staff to administer newly established Disability Support Centers and ensure equal access to higher education for university students with disabilities. Participants, including officials from the Egyptian Ministry of Education, will travel to Missoula, MT, and Boulder, CO, for presentations and trainings in the fall.

by Marty Blair, Executive Director of the Rural Institute

We are making progress, but we are still trying to figure it out decades later! Twenty years ago, in June 1999, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Olmstead v. LC that unjustified segregation of people with disabilities violated their rights guaranteed under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The ADA, which was signed into law 9 years earlier on July 26, 1990, established the civil rights of people with disabilities and helped them be more included at work and in the community. The Olmstead decision sent a clear message that people with disabilities are entitled to work, live and participate in communities of their choice. The challenge for most people with disabilities is that the community-based services and supports they need to ensure participation are sometimes limited or non-existent. You can’t choose something that doesn’t exist.