Feature Issue on Loneliness and People with Intellectual, Developmental, and Other Disabilities

Access 2 Community & Friendship co-founders: (back row) Tatiana Thomas, Andrew Carr; (front row) Austin Carr, Elizabeth Gray

Access 2 Community and Friendship (https://www.access2communityandfriendship.com/home) is a social group that is about empowerment and social connection for young? adults. We plan monthly events so people with and without disabilities can come together in-person and build friendships. We are the leaders, and we have different types of disabilities. Some of us have intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). We work together and support each other.

We started A2CF because there were not a lot of opportunities for young adults with disabilities to come together and socialize. Many programs are only for people under the age of 22. This means, we could not participate when we “aged out.” We wanted to stay connected with our friendship group, so we were meeting at our houses. We outgrew our houses, and they were not accessible for everyone. We also wanted to expand and meet more people in the community.

Around the same time that we were thinking about this, the COVID-19 pandemic started, and it magnified the challenges we had connecting with friends. It also taught us how important it is to stay connected. Tatiana remembers finishing high-school when COVID-19 started. She felt lonely, and there wasn’t a lot of support from her teachers. Elizabeth had a good routine before the pandemic, taking the train to the Statehouse and working for a state representative. Then, everything changed, and the internship got cut. The lack of structure was hard.

Like many of us, Austin remembered thinking the lockdown was only going to last two weeks, but of course, nobody knew what the future would hold. We had to stay socially distant. We decided it was even more important to stay connected over video or telephone. Andrew remembered that it was a really isolating time. The pandemic heightened the need for a social, community group and highlighted the growing need for community support and collaboration. This experience helped spark the creation of A2CF – it was like a rainbow after the storm.

How we built A2CF

We started by meeting together in people’s garages, but we did not have enough space in our homes to include all our friends. We wanted to find space in the community so more people could come together in person. We worked with our family members to find different options. For example, we got support from the Cambridge Community Center to host events there. Once we had accessible space, we kept going forward. We were growing and we wanted to make an official group. We brainstormed together and came up with the idea for a group name – Access 2 Community and Friendship. We were doing events and sharing about them via word-of-mouth. Then, the niece of our mentors helped us make a website, and Tatiana’s mom helps update information about our past and future events. We also started Facebook and Instagram pages. We all work together and have different tasks. For example, Elizabeth manages the email inbox and responding to emails. Tatiana and Austin recruit new members.

Intersections

We have held at least one event each month for more than a year. Sometimes we go to community events, such as visiting the Museum of Science, doing adaptive sailing, taking a harbor cruise, and going to parades. We also host our own holiday parties, yoga nights, and dances.

We strive to include everyone, especially people from underserved communities, so no one is left out. All our information is available in English and Spanish. Tatiana is Latina, and she and her mom make sure Spanish-speaking families know about our events and feel welcomed. Tatiana and Austin reach out to disability organizations. We had a table at the Cotting School Transition Resource Fair. We also had a table at a Federation for Children with Special Needs event.

A2CF is all about inclusion. We believe our events need to be free of charge so that everyone can participate, and we received a grant from the Cambridge Community Foundation to help fund some of our events.

A2CF combats loneliness

Part of our goal is to help people with disabilities feel less lonely. We believe we can decrease isolation and loneliness by having monthly social activities that people look forward to. A2CF is about making real friendships. We act as mentors and role models, making sure to invite people to our events. Then, we follow-up with individual phone calls to make sure people remember the event. We also make introductions to new members so everyone feels included.

When people make new friends at our events, they often end up spending time together outside of our events, which helps combat loneliness. For example, we invited some group home members to our Valentine’s Day party. One participant said she was lonely, so we added her to our email list and reached out after the event. Now we’ve become friends and she is coming to more events.

We also do events in the community to explore new spaces, and Tatiana helps members learn how to use the train system to attend. Having events that are close to public transportation is important because everyone uses different modalities. Some people coordinate carpools, which provides another chance for building connections.

Friends who come to our events also build confidence and self-esteem. The foundation of A2CF is friendship, but it eventually happened that many people were encouraged to be disability advocates like us. This helps build our community too.

Our Future

Our goal for the future is to add more people with and without disabilities to our group so it is sustainable. We also want to encourage our existing membesr to be more involved. We are thinking of starting a blog because many of our members like to write and take photos. This is another way we can build our community.

We are also working on becoming a 501(c)3 organization, so we can raise money and expand our events. Renting event space is expensive, and there are other costs for our events. We hope to find an affordable, accessible space near public transportation. We volunteer our time, but it takes a village. Our events are possible because other people also volunteer and donate to make them happen.

We are excited for the future, and we are proud of everything we have already done. As leaders of A2CF, we are most proud of the community we have built and all the continued interest. Our events are well attended and successful! People have fun, and they come back again and again. We have also been getting new people each time. Lastly, we are also proud of how we have grown as leaders together. We set out to help others build friendships, and we became even better friends along the way.