UMaine Center Collaborates to Improve Volunteer Opportunities for People with Disabilities
Contact: Sandra Horne, 581-1236; George Manlove, 581-3756
ORONO – The UMaine Center for Community Inclusion and Disability Studies (CCIDS) is partnering with the Maine Commission for Community Service in a year-long collaboration designed to facilitate the recruitment and participation of people with disabilities as community service volunteers.
The endeavor, “Project Ready to ServeMaine,” is made possible through a 2009 National Service Inclusion Project grant, and is expected to result in an increase in the application, enrollment and retention of national service members and volunteers with disabilities in Maine. The project will forge strong partnerships among Alpha One, a Center for Independent Living; Speaking Up for Us, Maine’s Self-Advocacy Network; the Maine Commission for Community Service; and the AmeriCorps/AmeriCorps VISTA programs in the state.
“Project Ready to ServeMaine is exciting because it will provide key people with an opportunity to work together in efforts to expand volunteer placements for individuals with disabilities,” says project director Janet May, CCIDS’s coordinator of transition and adults.
The National Service Inclusion Project (NSIP) is a training and technical assistance provider operating under the auspices of the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS). NSIP works through the Institute for Community Inclusion at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, in collaboration with the Association of University Centers on Disabilities.
The University of Maine CCIDS, established in 1992, is part of a national network of 67 congressionally authorized University Centers for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities. Those centers are sponsored by the Administration on Developmental Disabilities within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
CCIDS at UMaine brings together the resources of the university and Maine communities to enhance the quality of life for individuals with disabilities and their families.
The CCIDS’s statewide mission is met through interdisciplinary education, research, community service and dissemination of state-of-the-art information that reflect the guiding principles of inclusion, diversity, universal design and access and social justice.
More information about CCIDS is available on its web site www.ccids.umaine.edu.