11 Disability-Led Organizations to Follow This Disability Pride Month
Photo Credit: canva.com. Graphic Artist: Sarai Pak
The great outdoors is meant to be experienced by everyone, but disabled people are often excluded from the conversation and physical outdoor spaces by a lack of accessible trails and information on accessibility online.
However, adaptive organizations are creating spaces so people of all abilities can enjoy outdoor and active spaces. Here are eleven organizations to support and follow for Disability Pride Month.
Disabled Hikers
Disabled Hikers is an entirely disability-led organization that celebrates disabled experiences in the great outdoors. The nonprofit is an informative resource that facilitates group hikes and events while remaining committed to advocating for justice, access, and inclusion when partnering with parks and organizations in the United States.
There is growing evidence that spending time in nature provides emotional, physical, and mental health benefits. Disabled Hikers founder Syren Nagakyrie (they/them) believes that disabled people should not be excluded from these benefits due to barriers in outdoor recreation.
Nagakyrie, who has Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, chronic pain and fatigue, C-PTSD, and depression, founded Disabled Hikers in March 2018 after hiking a trail listed as easy, but presented numerous accessibility issues. Tired of feeling excluded from the outdoor community, Nagakyrie began writing their own trail guides and sharing disabled folks’ outdoors experiences online.
Their website provides resources for disabled hikers, including informative trail guides that include accessibility ratings, difficulty level, statistics in elevations and distances, and general trail conditions with disabled hikers in mind. This September, Nagakyrie is publishing The Disabled Hiker’s Guide to Western Washington and Oregon: outdoor adventures accessible by car, wheelchair, and on foot, a book which will include over 50 outdoor adventures for disabled hikers.
2. Adaptive Climbing Group
Kareemah Batts founded the Adaptive Climbing Group (ACG) in 2012 to bring accessible climbing to people with disabilities. After a partial amputation related to her treatments for stage 4 Synovial Sarcoma Cancer, she found an inclusive community at her local climbing gym. ACG provides dedicated programming and support for disabled climbers at Brooklyn Boulders gyms in multiple cities across the United States, including Boston, Chicago, and New York.
As Communications Director Henry Ko stated, the mission of ACG is to “…offer a safe and welcoming environment in a space that has been difficult for underrepresented communities to feel like they belong.” One way the organization creates a safe space for their participants is by removing barriers to entry by providing free or discounted entry passes into their climbing gyms. They provide rental gear and specialized equipment at no extra charge for indoor and outdoor climbing experiences and partner with professional guiding companies for safe sessions in outdoor rock or ice climbing.
“Accessibility, inclusivity, and community are the tenets that we strive in building at our chapters”
People of all abilities can get involved with ACG. Adaptive climbers can participate at partnered gyms, or even apply to be a sponsored athlete to compete in national and international paraclimbing competitions with financial assistance for gear, registration costs, and more. ACG is an entirely volunteer-run nonprofit, so volunteers can help with indoor climbing gym sessions or sign up to sponsor adaptive athletes.
3. I AM ADAPTIVE
I AM ADAPTIVE is a nonprofit that hosts adaptive fitness events for local communities, raises money for various causes in the adaptive community, and creates an online social platform for adaptive athletes.
At the age of 21, founder Marilyn Cruz was in a near-fatal car accident that left her with a traumatic brain injury and amnesia. Several years after the accident, she found a therapeutic outlet through CrossFit, a popular branded fitness regimen, and discovered scientific studies that suggest physical activity is one of the best ways to get the brain functioning again. She felt inspired after watching a CrossFit video that featured adaptive athletes.
In 2014, she started the Instagram page I Am Adaptive to showcase opportunities for adaptive athletes. Since then, the account has garnered 70,000 followers and shares stories about adaptive athletes around the world, with the hashtag #IAmAdaptive shared over 124,000 times. Cruz prides herself on creating connections within the disabled people, to remind others that they’re not alone.
4. High Fives Foundation
High Fives Foundation is a nonprofit organization that serves adaptive athletes who are recovering from injuries. The Foundation focuses on five disciplines: surf, ski, fish, bike, and dirt that serve as a way for athletes of all levels to return to the sport they love alongside an adaptive community.
In 2006, aspiring pro skier Roy Tuscany became partially paralyzed as the result of a skiing accident. At the time, the nonprofit he worked for started a fund that allowed him to focus on recovery for the next two years, and the support inspired him to found High Fives.
Photo Credit: Kate LeMasurier Abraham
“It just hit me that I should pay it forward as others fall into the same shoes that I did.”
“Why not create something that would help others that might not have that same community that I did? That’s what High Fives has been able to do now for 13 years. We can create a universal shift in adventure sports that expands what is possible for those who face life changing injuries.”
High Fives hosts 24 adaptive sports camps across North America, 24 fundraising events, and sponsors athletes and teams with fully paid equipment, lodging, and travel to participate in adaptive championships nationwide.
5. Adaptive Sports Center
The Adaptive Sports Center (ASC) is a nonprofit therapeutic recreation program that operates year-round in Crested Butte, Colorado. Founded in 1987 by a small but passionate group of disabled folks who wanted to provide instruction and equipment to disabled individuals on their home mountain, the organization now offers a wide range of adaptive activities, including mountain biking, skiing, ice climbing, kayaking, and more.
On average, ASC provides over 6,000 activities annually to more than 1,200 individuals who come to Crested Butte from all over the world. ASC’s participant base includes individuals with a broad range of physical, emotional and cognitive differences and their families.
They offer specialized summer and winter programs for all levels and abilities, as well as annual camps for anyone seeking adventure in the Rocky Mountains, including adaptive mountain biking world championships, ladies’ seasonal sessions, the Roger Pepper Adventure camp for teen burn survivors, and Operation Rise and Conquer for war veterans. ASC also works to dismantle economic barriers by offering scholarships and a pay-what-you-can sliding scale to offer their programs to individuals of all economic backgrounds.
6. Bay Area Outreach and Recreation Program
In 1976, disabled folks founded The Bay Area Outreach and Recreation Program (BORP) to create access to sports, fitness, and recreation for disabled children, adults, and families who, at that time, had almost no opportunities to participate in those activities.
BORP offers multiple team sports for adults and children, including goalball, power soccer, sled hockey, and basketball for folks with lower limb disabilities, visual impairments, and power wheelchair users. They also host trips that include kayaking, hiking, and whitewater rafting in wheelchair vehicles.
BORP staff member Bonnie Lewkowicz is the director of Access Northern California, a website of local accessible trails, since most park trail organizations lack information on accessibility. She also advocates for removing accessibility barriers by reaching out to parks and requesting they post more accessible information on their websites. All BORP’s events are volunteer run.
7. WildAbility
WildAbility is an online platform that centers disabled voices in climate conversations, environmental activism, and the development of nature-based solutions. The organization empowers disabled youth to become environmental leaders by ensuring that they have equal access to opportunities for outdoor experiences, learning and career development.
Founder Kelcie Miller-Anderson, who lives with several genetic diseases, knows how environmental spaces often excluded disabled communities from their diversity strategies. After she began using a wheelchair in 2019, she realized how inaccessible outdoor spaces are with so few disabled voices in the environmental space.
Her platform invites disabled youth to participate in educational and capacity building activities that are available to other aspiring environmental leaders. WildAbility’s Instagram features informative posts and inspiring stories to foster a community of nature lovers who want to protect the earth they love.
8. Disabled & Outdoors
Outdoor enthusiast Ambika Rajyagor, who lives with an autoimmune condition, has always considered the outdoors to be a space that provides peace for her and her sister Devika, who has intellectual disabilities, cerebral palsy, severe epilepsy, and uses a wheelchair full-time. But getting into national parks is rarely a smooth journey with a lack of wheelchair-accessible paths.
In 2017, she co-founded Disabled & Outdoors, a small, independent, BIPOC-run organization made by and for the adaptive outdoor community. Their online platform provides resources for accessible programs, amplifies disabled outdoor voices, and aims to create systemic change in the outdoor industry.
To date, Disabled & Outdoors has collaborated with several organizations in the outdoor industry, including AllTrails, National Environmental Education Foundation (NEEF), and Intersectional Environmentalist to ensure opportunities and educational resources for the adaptive community.
9. Diversibility
Diversability is an organization that amplifies disabled voices and democratizes disability visibility, representation, and access. They collaborate with companies and organizations to provide talks and events on disability inclusion, and cultivate a network of research and experts in disability, diversity, and inclusion.
When Diversability founder Tiffany Yu was nine years old, she was in a car accident that killed her father and left her disabled. The hardest part of that experience was the chronic exclusion she faced in the following years in school, which inspired her work to make disabled people feel seen and valued.
10. Blindish Latina
Blindish Latina is a platform that smashes disability stigmas through storytelling and advocacy. Founded and run by Catarina Rivera, the platform dispels myths, shares resources, and tells stories of disabled folks’ lived experiences.
Rivera has worn hearing aids since childhood and was diagnosed with Usher Syndrome at 17, which includes progressive vision loss, due to retinitis pigmentosa, with a hearing disability. Her instagram includes stories of microaggressions, conversations with other activists, and examples of ways the world can exclude or include disabled folks.
Rivera works as a public speaker and DEI consultant with various organizations, bringing her intersectional experiences as a professional, disabled, Latine woman to the forefront of her work.
11. Disability Justice Culture Club
The Disability Justice Culture Club is an organization in deep East Oakland that serves as the center of Disability Justice community resilience and an organizing hub. They host community gatherings and celebrations, organize events and protest planning sessions, and take part in emergency resource preparation and distribution for BIPOC and Disabled communities.
DJCC is located in a home that was purchased by late founder Stacy Park Milbern to create a radically accessible space in the rapidly-gentrifying Bay Area. Today, the space is home to three disabled and/or neurodivergent QTBIPOC residents, who are working to purchase the property and form a housing collective that maintains affordable housing for disabled folks, who often receive small, fixed income.
Make sure to follow all these organizations on social media to continue learning how to create outdoor spaces that are inclusive for people of all abilities. If you know an organization with an ambitious idea, NEEF is also funding year-long projects in fourteen states that make public lands more accessible with the 2022 Driving Mobility and Accessibility on Public Lands Grant. Applicants can request up to $20,000 per project.
