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18 February 2025
By Lisa Handelman, Federation’s Inclusion & Belonging Specialist
What happens when campers with disabilities grow up? Since February is Jewish Disability Awareness, Acceptance and Inclusion month (JDAIM), I decide to check in with two young adults with disabilities, Adam and Lily. I first met Adam and Lily as campers at our local Jewish overnight camp that my four children, similar in age, also attended. They both went on to become staff at camp and continue to be involved with the local Jewish community.
Both Adam and Lily shared fond memories of being campers and staff members at a Jewish overnight camp. Lily felt the best part of being a camper was, “feeling like I can away from home and have the supports I needed to be a participant at camp.” She said she wanted to work at camp to be a role model for other campers with disabilities and, “to give back to the camp where I found so much community and spirit.” Adam shared that while he liked doing activities, such as swimming and basketball, he came back every year for the friends. Camp provided a critical first job experience for both Adam and Lily. As Lily said, “people with disabilities are always going to be at a disadvantage and giving them any kind of work or internship is beneficial. In addition, as Lily pointed out “employers benefit as well as diversity opens up workplaces to different people and ideas.” I enjoyed working with Lily and Adam at camp and agree that the community benefited from them being part of the staff.
Adam is currently living in a Mainstreet Apartment (an inclusive Rockville-based community). He shared with me that he likes being independent, living close to the metro and to places to eat “I like to talk to and hang out with friends, I am enjoying (living at Mainstreet) and I am happy,” Adam explained. Adam also enjoys working for Congregation Beth El of Montgomery County as an assistant movement specialist, at Capital Camps & Retreat Center’s office in Rockville doing a variety of tasks, and at Bar-T as an after-school aide. He also likes working at Capital Camps during the summer and is looking forward to getting his fifteen-year jacket in summer 2025 since between being a camper and a staff member, he will have been at camp 15 summers. Adam said that he likes working with kids of all ages and enjoys “different types of work.”
Lily is currently a college student at Wright State University where she is majoring in social work. She uses a powered wheelchair and has traveled with her university to Berlin as part of a study abroad program to explore disability access. While she is not sure what she wants to do after college, she is interested in policy or working with people with disabilities. She is planning to move back to the DC area when she graduates. She shared that while she wants to live in Maryland to be near her family, she also feels tied to living in a state where she receives her Medicaid waiver. Each state has its own regulations for providing Medicaid waivers such as Home and Community Based Services (HCBS) so moving to a new state involves the extra burden reapplying for necessary benefits.
My motivation for reconnecting with Adam and Lily is both personal and professional. September 2024, I joined the Jewish Federation of Greater Washinton (JFGW) as Director of Inclusion and Belonging. One of the first projects I had the opportunity to work on involved advancing inclusion for Jewish young adults. In 2023, Matan, a national organization that works to advance disability inclusion, partnered with JFGW to explore the state of Jewish Disability Inclusion in the Greater Washington Area. One of the top recommendations of this review was “to help…Jewish communal professionals (with an emphasis on organizations serving young adults) build skills for inclusion through community-wide training, coaching, and other opportunities…” This led to our local community piloting Matan’s Lieberman Fellowship for Jewish Organizations Serving Young Adults which launched in September 2024 with nine local organizations (Gather DC, One Table, MemGoblal (formally Moishe House), Sixth & I, Bender JCCGW, Pozez JCCNV, Edlavitch DCJCC, Temple Rodef Shalom, B’nai Israel Congregation). This year-long fellowship includes training, mentoring, and a capstone project.
I asked Adam and Lily what advice they would give our nine local organizations involved Matan’s Lieberman Fellowship for Jewish Organizations Serving Young Adults. Adam said he would be interested in a programing about Jewish holidays. He shared that it would be helpful to meet the person running the program before attending and that being able to get there by bus or metro is important. Lily echoed Adam’s points about transportation and provided some additional suggestions. Her advice is “to be open to conversation. To ask what people with disabilities need to support them to be participants in the community. That might look very different in certain situations, but organizations need to realize that sometimes a person with a disability should not have to incur the extra cost for transportation and support. This makes everything hard for people like me to participate.”
Talking with Adam and Lily is a good reminder to pay attention to access and accessibility needs. We need to consider the challenges in getting to a program in addition to how accessible the space is where the program is taking place. I am looking forward to seeing the sustainability changes the organizations in the Lieberman Fellowship for Jewish Organizations Serving Young Adults will implement. With necessary changes and adjustments, I’m also hopeful I will see Adam and Lily at programs created by these organizations in the future.