2016 Enables Me Year in Review

Another year has come and gone, and we’ve accomplished quite a few things that we are proud of. So here is our 2016 Enables Me Year in Review! Before we jump into it, I’d like to share a poem our team created during our team building event this year:

Enables Me is empowering, motivating and challenging.
The stories we write,
help advance our fight,
to make this right,
day and night.
Transportation, school and work accommodation.
Building legislation to benefit our nation.

Enables Me Live! Speaker Series

We wanted to bring people together to create a dialogue regarding accessibility with topics from technology, research, community, wellness and among others. Our team hosted two speaker series, first in Toronto, where we also celebrated our first birthday and second in Georgina, called Keep Calm and Roll-On Enabling Georgina. Both featured excellent speakers from Enables Me and other organisations that are transforming how we perceive and how we can enable persons with disabilities.

Accessibility Ideathon

With our friends at Braze Mobility, we invited researchers, engineers, designers, curious people and persons with disabilities together. Using design thinking methodology we came up with ideas on how we can enable persons with accessible needs at the Accessibility Ideathon. It was an excellent day full of laughter and problem solving. We even had the CEO of Spinal Cord Injury Ontario, Stuart, out mentoring the teams!

Access Files Radio Show

Access Files, the brainchild of the highly energetic and passionate host Mitch Stark. We partnered up and made the show available on Enables Me! I also tagged along for the ride for part of the season as his co-host and we had lots of fun interviewing incredible beings such as Canadian Paralympian, Amy Burk.

Enabling Children and Youth

We were lucky to have received a grant this year and wanted to do something for the community. With many of our members being alumni of Sunny View Public School in Toronto, we decided to gift Easter Seals Access 2 Entertainment memberships and tickets to the Toronto Zoo to students from low-income families.

It’s been an incredible year and I’m grateful for what we’ve been able to achieve since we started unofficially three years ago. I’m looking forward to what 2017 will bring and for now, will celebrate what we’ve done this year.

Happy Holidays!

P.S. We would love to hear your story and what enables you! You can submit your story here.