Celebrities Attend 7th Annual UCP/NYC Women Who Care Luncheon
United Cerebral Palsy of New York City (UCP/NYC) held its 7th Annual Women Who Care Luncheon on May 8, 2008, which celebrated women whose outstanding achievements have distinguished them in their professional and private lives. More than 500 guests assembled at Cipriani 42nd Street to honor six extraordinary individuals and raise more than $550,000 to support UCP/NYC's extensive network of more than 75 individual programs serving more than 13,000 children and adults with disabilities and their families. Actors Susan Lucci, Linda Lavin and Connor Paolo, veteran New York Jets star Greg Buttle, and journalists Perri Peltz and Dan Rather were among the celebrity guests and award presenters. Donna Hanover served as Master of Ceremonies.
The 2008 Women Who Care honorees were Gwen Bey, the Chief Administrative Officer of Kenyon & Kenyon LLP; Westina Matthews Shatteen, the Managing Director of Community Business Development at Merrill Lynch; and Patrice Tanaka, the Co-Chair and Chief Creative Officer of CRT/tanaka.
The Luella Bennack Volunteer Award was presented to Deborah Fine, President of iVillage. Susan Williams and Beth Lief received the Karen Hansen Caregiver Award.
The efforts of honorary chair Cathleen Black (President, Hearst Magazines) and co-chairs Patricia Ganzi and Loreen Arbus helped make this year's Women Who Care Luncheon a rousing success.
"Grab-a-Bag for UCP," chaired by Susan Schulz (Editor-in-Chief, CosmoGIRL!), raised almost $85,000 for the organization by offering "A. Tierney City Tote bags" containing trips from Continental Airlines and Norwegian Cruise Line, a weekend at The Sanctuary Spa in London and other great prizes.
Easter Seals UCP North Carolina Receives Major Microsoft Grant
Connie L. Cochran, President and CEO of Easter Seals UCP North Carolina, announced recently that the organization has been awarded a large strategic grant from the Microsoft Corporation totaling $1,658,919 in retail products. The grant award is comprised of Microsoft products Microsoft Office, Microsoft Windows OS, Microsoft Server OS, Microsoft Encarta, Microsoft Math, and many Backend Software Licenses. These products will serve to bring the organization into full compliance with all Microsoft software licensing requirements and, by strengthening its technological infrastructure, enhance its ability to serve individuals with disabilities and their families.
When asked about the impact the Microsoft grant would have on individuals and families, Easter Seals UCP North Carolina CEO Connie Cochran said,
"Good communication is prerequisite to the top quality services we strive to provide to individuals and families on a daily basis. In our children's centers, the Microsoft products will allow our teachers and therapists easier access to web-based teaching and treatment materials. We will be able to communicate more often and more effectively with our parents and take full advantage of accessibility features that have tremendous impact in our work with children who have visual, hearing, physical or learning impairments. In addition, the many adults we serve face tremendous communication barriers every day. This Microsoft grant award will go a long way in helping us enable adults with disabilities to become more engaged in their communities. The individuals we serve will be better able to communicate with family, friends and others on matters relating to education, employment or social engagement."
Easter Seals UCP North Carolina is a state-wide non-profit organization that provides supports and services to over 15,000 North Carolina residents with disabilities and their families. Easter Seals UCP North Carolina's three major focus areas are Child and Family Services, Accessible Living and Employment.
Many States have designated May as Women's Health Month. Women with disabilities have many of the same health concerns and needs as all women—such as needing routine breast and cervical cancer screens or treatment for the flu or an infection. They also might have special health concerns related to their disabilities or illnesses.
However, there are barriers—both physical and attitudinal— that keep women with disabilities from getting screening and preventive care that can compromise their health. Many of the health disparities identified through research on women with disabilities may be traced back to problems in accessing health care or lack of providers who are informed about health in the context of disabilities. According to the Center for Research on Women with Disabilities (CROWD), women with disabilities are often denied reproductive and other types of health care, or given substandard care compared to women with uncomplicated health care needs. Several studies have documented the lack of health insurance among women with disabilities.
Does your community have accessible healthcare services for women with disabilities?
You can help by educating health care providers on how they can better serve women with disabilities. The following websites provide information and materials on access to health care for women with disabilities:
UCPeople Blog: Understanding the RSS Subscribe Feature
As a continuing report to educate our audience about the significance of transitioning UCPeople into a blog, we would like to discuss some more basics - What is RSS?
What is RSS?
RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication." RSS is a format for storing online information in a way that makes the information readable by several types of software.
RSS feed buttons are often displayed as seen on the right. RSS is better understood as the text content from a blog or any other Web site, calendar, news story, etc. where content is updated frequently. RSS is the broad standard that makes online information easy to share across different browsers, programs or operating systems in a text format.
Why RSS?
If you subscribe to RSS feeds from your favorite Web sites and blogs, you can spend twenty minutes reading all your favorite news sources in one place, allowing you to use your time more efficiently. Also, you will receive an automatic notification after you have subscribed when new content is available. This decreases the time you spend visiting a Web site looking for new information. Rather than navigate from Web site to Web site, you save time because all of your updates are in one place.
RSS Feed Resources
» FeedReader.com - A downloadable program that will retreive RSS Feeds for you.
» Blogrovr.com - A Web site that retrieves RSS Feeds for you and extension to download for the Mozilla Firefox Web browser.
Conference Update: Twilight Monument Tour, a Must-See
Join colleagues & friends on a Twilight Tour of the Monuments, Friday June 20. Embark on an historical journey that touches upon the lives of some of the most important figures in our nation's history and see George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abe Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt at their finest. Transportation by an air-conditioned, accessible bus will be provided. Drinks and light refreshments will be served. The fun begins at 8:30 PM.
Advance registration ($25) is required for this event. A minimum of 30 people must be signed up to conduct the tour. Make sure to secure your seat and register by June 1, 2008. If you've already registered and would like to add this option, please contact Terrie King at 800-872-5827 for more information.
Don't Delay - Register today for the 2008 Believable Hope Conference, sponsored by United Cerebral Palsy.
» eSight Careers Network: Online information and guidance for job seekers, career counselors, job developers and prospective employers about what works best for a range of disability employment issues.
» National Organization on Disability (NOD): Emergency Preparedness Initiative (EPI), ensures that emergency managers address disability concerns and that people with disabilities are included in all levels of emergency preparedness planning, response and recovery.
Cerebral palsy not stopping Gregory from living a dream USA Today, 5/20/08 The "sports nut" from Savannah, Ga., is following his dream to live life on the Tour, driven to navigate every hole of every round of every tournament with a different player each week this year.
Nonprofits offered free captioning Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 5/20/08 Nonprofit groups have a chance to spread video or DVD messages to the deaf and hard-of-hearing communities for free, thanks to an offer from a Washington County captioning company.
But every three years, she must go through a time-consuming process that will cost Metro more than $1 million this year to prove a basic fact of life for her and thousands of other riders: Her disability makes it difficult for her to ride Metrorail or Metrobus and therefore qualifies her for curb-to-curb MetroAccess service.
Ramp up to better life Lake County News-Sun, 5/15/08 The Waukegan law firm of Salvi, Schostok and Pritchard has sponsored events for United Cerebral Palsy in the past and wanted to help build a ramp for a local family, said T.J. Saye of Lake Villa, the chief administrative officer for the law firm.
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