As part of International Day of People with Disability, local organisations banded together on December 3 to increase public awareness and acceptance of people with disability and celebrate their achievements.
Disability service Umbrella Support was founded by Cindy Warren in the midst of Covid-19 lockdowns to help connect people with disability to employment opportunities.
“I started Umbrella Support to give people genuine and meaningful opportunities with that personal touch,” Ms Warren said.
“One of my favourite things I hear these people say is ‘I’m going to work today’ which makes someone with a disability feel connected and part of the community.
“Understanding disability and getting the message out is so important because they all have different talents and skills and they just want to belong.”
Ms Warren has worked closely with Cranbourne East’s social enterprise L’Arte Central director Anthony Cheeseman to give opportunities to young people with physical and mental challenges.
“We have about 20 young people that work at our florist and to prepare meals for the homeless,” Mr Cheeseman said.
“We prepared 20,000 meals during Covid-19 and Cindy supports the participants.”
The enterprise was able to remain open throughout Covid-19 lockdowns.
“We also delivered 175 grazing boxes for Father’s Day,” Mr Cheeseman said.
“Today, we’re rolling a new program with Access Ability Australia which allows people to print out accessibility guides that provide information about accessing venues.”
A lemon tree was donated to Umbrella Support thanks to the help of Live 2 Achieve founder Kathy Bartlett and Sydney based Safe Special Needs founder Mona Ayoub.
Ms Ayoub said the planting aimed to teach people with disability about sustainability and environment.
“We wanted to do something like this to unite and meet like-minded people – to spread awareness and change the lives of these individuals, even in a small way,” Ms Ayoub said.
“This is a nice way to commemorate such a significant day.”
The tree was planted out the front of L’Arte Central.
