A message from our Founder and First President

The Ability Foundation begins with a question that should be simple:

What does a human being need in order to live with dignity?

For persons living with disabilities, that question is too often replaced by another:

What limited assistance are you eligible to receive?

Those are not the same question.

A policy can exist and still fail the person it was supposedly created to serve.

A benefit can exist and still be inadequate.

A right can exist in legislation and still remain inaccessible in daily life.

And an individual can live inside a household with working relatives and still have legitimate personal needs created by a disability that prevents that individual from earning an income.

I believe we must examine disability differently.

We must understand the individual rather than merely the classification.

We must ask what a person can do, what that person cannot do, what support can expand their independence and what resources are necessary where independence is not possible.

The ultimate measure of our work will not be the number of programs we can list.

It will be the quality of life experienced by the people those programs are supposed to serve.

My objective for the Ability Foundation is therefore clear.

For the person who cannot work, there must be a path to adequate food, housing and essential utilities.

For the person who needs medical treatment, there must be access.

For the person who requires a wheelchair, hospital bed, assistive device or home modification, there must be mechanisms through which those necessities can be obtained.

For the person who can work but is excluded because a workplace is inaccessible, there must be advocacy and reform.

For the family providing continuous care, there must be recognition that care itself has human and economic costs.

And for policymakers, there must be reliable information upon which responsible decisions can be made.

Care and support must become pillars of the disability experience in Antigua and Barbuda.