Thursday, December 7, 2017
Integrated Living Opportunities (ILO) is a non-profit organization devoted to helping families build integrated, supported communities that enable safe, productive, independent living options for their young adults with developmental disabilities.
ILO was founded by Maedi Tanham Carney, CFP®, CWIC, in 2014. In the last 4 years, Carney, ILO board members, the five founding families, and self-advocates have worked to grow our organization and improve the services we offer. We are proud to say that today our organization is successful. Our original group of participating families and self-advocates has grown, and together we are building supported communities for adults with disabilities. We are creating networks of support for self-advocates, building partnerships, connecting with communities and integrating into neighborhoods. Our supported communities are making a difference in the lives of ILO self-advocates.
In fact, over the last few months, ILO is growing more quickly than we ever dared to dream. Many self-advocates are living independently, with ILO support. We are hiring new staff, which will enable us to provide more support to current self-advocates, and to recruit new participating families. We are continuing to build our Community Group to include individuals with disabilities that want to participate in the ILO Community, but may not want to actively prepare for independent living.
Self-Advocates Preparing to Live Independently
At ILO, our goal is to have self-advocates live in an independent living option created according to their dreams, while supported according to their needs. In the next couple of months, we are proud to announce that three of our self-advocates are on track to achieving that goal. From all of us at ILO, we would like to extend sincere and heartfelt congratulations to Rachel and Vinay, both of whom are moving into their own places in December, and to Ellie, who will achieve independent living in January or February 2018. We look forward to seeing pictures of the big moves, and to continue to support these self-advocates as they settle into their new lives and continue to integrate into their communities.
ILO is Growing – Virginia Expansion, New ILO Staff, and ILO Videos
In addition to helping self-advocates live independently, ILO is working hard behind the scenes to ensure that we are continuing to expand the services we are offering self-advocates and participating families. A major part of this effort is our upcoming expansion into Virginia – we will be offering more information on this expansion in the coming months, but if you are interested in creating a supported community in Virginia please contact us.
As well, ILO will be welcoming a new staff person to our ranks in early 2018. This new hire will assume the role of Program Director, and will be responsible for launching and managing our community pods, managing other ILO staff, and the expansion in Virginia (among other things).
Finally, from the administrative side, is the revamp of our website, which will allow us to continue to improve on the ways in which we engage with our online community. Part of this update will be the addition of ILO promotional videos, created by Will Schermerhorn – stay tuned to www.ilonow.org for these upcoming changes!
ILO Events Coming Up Soon
ILO has a number of events planned over the next couple of months. The first, happening very shortly, is the Hudis Cookie Making Party taking place Sunday, December 10 which is for the Bethesda Pod self-advocates. For more information on this event or the Bethesda Pod, please contact us.
ILO also has an ABLE Popup planned for January 23rd,, 2018 from 6:00pm-8:00pm. This event will provide the opportunity for attendees to learn about ABLE accounts from experts, ask questions, and register for an ABLE Account. The ABLE Pop up is open to ILO Community Group members only – for more information or to join the Community Group, please follow this link.
Would You Like More Information?
From all of us at ILO, thanks for taking the time to visit our website and read our blog today. If you would like more information about our organization, please contact us – we would love to meet you and your family member with disabilities, and learn about your unique special needs journey.
If you would like to stay in the loop with ILO news, please take a moment to subscribe to our blog.
