Disability EmpowHer Network

In today's episode, we chat with Sophie Poost, Director of Programs at Disability EmpowHer Network, an organization that empowers girls and young women with disabilities through skills building, community, and mentorship. Their flagship program is a Camp held in June in the Adirondack mountains of Northeastern New York, followed by a project completed by the participants and guided by their mentors who they are paired with at Camp. They then get to share this project with the group when they meet up in July in Washington DC. Camp doesn't stop there! EmpowHer Network provides ongoing mentorship and representation of positive role models as these young persons with disabilities embark on their careers.

Edited Transcript:

Marsh Naidoo (00:27):

Welcome to this episode of the Raising Kellan Podcast. My name is Marsh Naidoo and I blog at www.Raisingkellan.org where we curate resources for parents raising children with developmental delay and disabilities. As always, remember, the content provided on this podcast is purely informational, and if you seek advice for your specific situation to always contact a trained professional. This episode is brought to you by Rebecca Renfro of Move Up Physical Therapy in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. If you would like to support the work that we do at the podcast contact us at raisingkellan@gmail.com.

Marsh Naidoo (01:23):

Guys, I would like to welcome Sophie Poost to the Raising Kellan Podcast. Welcome, Sophie.

Sophie Poost (01:32):

Hi! Thank you for having me. I'm excited to chat with you today,

Marsh Naidoo (01:36):

Sophie's is the Director of Programs at EmpowHer Network. I would like for you all to actually Google them to look at the amazing programs that they offer. This is an organization that seeks to empower girls and young women with disabilities through mentoring and transformational learning experiences. Today, Sophie is going to share with us some of the programs offered at EmpowHer. But before we dig into that Sophie, I would love to know about your personal disability experience if you would kindly share that with us.

Sophie Poost (02:25):

Yeah, absolutely. So like you said, I am the Director of Programs, at Disability EmpowHer Network, but it took me a while to get here. So when I was a small child, I was in a bit of a tragic accident that led left me as a right leg amputee. And I grew up in rural Pennsylvania, so there wasn't much representation. There isn't much representation of disability in general, but especially, you know, growing up in the nineties and early two thousands, there was not much representation for me of disability, of women with disability, of successful women with disability. So growing up I definitely didn't have a great sense of how I fit into any disability community, which I would eventually find. And so I kind of went through life. I had a really supportive community growing up because I grew up in a very small town, a very small area.

(03:23):

Everyone kind of knows each other, so a lot of people knew me, a lot of people supported me, and I was really lucky to have that kind of community and still have that community in my life. I went to college, a small college, not far from home, like an hour and a half from home. And when I got there, I started to realize how much I had to advocate for myself as a person with a disability. I use a prosthetic leg, but sometimes I have issues with my prosthetic leg, so I'll be using crutches. And so having to use crutches on a college campus and navigate that experience was something that I hadn't done outside of the happy bubble of my small town. And so I started to have to look at the challenges both within my college experience, but also start thinking towards the future of how that might impact me and really start to grapple with my disability identity.

(04:15):

I was really lucky at that time that there was a multicultural center that had a very active student advocacy population who was working really hard to make changes, positive changes to the campus, both from a disability perspective, but also within racial struggles on campus. And the L G B T community also having some difficult experiences. So I was able to kind of learn about advocacy and intersectionality and my disability identity all at the same time in college. And I started to have to kind of figure out what that looked like for me. And because I was starting to come into this identity and wanting to learn more about the disability community, I became interested in after college getting a career or getting at least my first job in a disability-related field. I wanted to kind of explore that identity more with people who are already established in the field, you know, learn from people who have already, developed their own thoughts on it and could help me learn about disability history and navigating systems that were things that my parents had done for me my whole life.

(05:25):

I had never had to find a doctor that could help me with my leg or something like that. That was something completely new to me. So I wanted to get into some kind of field that there were people who already were going through those experiences, so I didn't feel as alone. So I was lucky enough to get a job as an advocate for a Center for Independent Living in upstate New York, where I was working on advocating for accessible housing as well as access in the public, in the community. And so I was really having these great experiences, meeting other people who were struggling with similar things and having to like work with representatives on the town level at the state national level, people who were owning businesses who were trying to navigate accessibility and learning through that lens.

(06:19):

From there met Stephanie Woodward, who is our executive director. She was actually the Director of Advocacy at that time when I started working as an advocate. So I was kind of new to the public field, like working as a professional and, and I got to work under Stephanie at that time and we started to build this relationship. I'm very lucky to have her as a mentor because now several years later, our careers took us in different directions. She is a lawyer, so she went and started practicing law and, and I was working in higher education and then Stephanie over the pandemic, along with her co-founder Lia Smith, decided to found Disability EmpowHer Network, and find space and create space for disabled girls and women because we know that girls and women with disabilities have unique experiences and there aren't a lot of resources available.

(07:16):

And so they founded Disability EmpowHer Network. And last year around this time I started working for Disability EmpowHer Network and working with Stephanie. And it's been really great to be able to be in a place where I can help create opportunities for young girls with disabilities, girls who I was like at one point in my life, be able to see people like them and be able to interact with people like them and see that there is a way to be successful. And that doesn't always look the same for everyone. Some people might wanna go to college, some people might not wanna go to college. Some people college isn't in their frame of mind at all. And so is that what you wanna do? What, what career you wanna go into? What are things that matter to you? Do you wanna have a family kind of helping girls with disabilities see that there are a breadth of opportunities for them and options. Exactly. And so that's kind of how I got here and I couldn't be happier to get to do this work every day.

Marsh Naidoo (08:17):

Sophie, there appears to be like three pillars, three foundational pillars, and you all concentrate around as you mentioned, creating a community mentorship and skills building. Can you just, now community, I, I understand very well from what you've explained, but can you tell me how that would kind of lead into the skills building and the mentorship? How is that structured within the network?

Sophie Poost (08:48):

Yeah, absolutely. And, and I think you've picked up on three really important parts of what put comes together as this idea of like interdependence and working together. We believe that girls with disabilities need to have skills to take them into adulthood. It's really common, I think and I experienced it as well for especially like as you get older for your parents to continue to do things for you. And it can be really difficult both as a parent and a child to see that and to try and break out of that pattern. And so it's really important to us that we're teaching skills that can be used in the real world to eventually get a independence, whatever that looks like, whether that means eventually you wanna move out into your own apartment or want to be more helpful to your parents when you're living with them.

(09:39):

So we really want to give our participants those skills that can help them be independent. We recognize that the healthcare system isn't always the best here in the United States. And so trying to figure out what are the things that you can do for yourself and what are the things you might need support for? And it doesn't matter what level of support you need, but knowing that for yourself is really important, and that's part of that skill building. The mentoring component comes from a lot of research that says, having someone in your life who can mentor you and help guide you, will lead you to success, especially for girls and women, especially for girls and women with disabilities. Having someone who can help you see the route and solve the problems that you're facing is really important to success. And we also believe that mentorship is, is community-based as well.

(10:30):

So that third pillar of community, we are always looking to pair people up with a mentor and also have them have a community of people who can mentor them. We recognize that a mentor can help you with a lot of things, but sometimes a problem arises that a mentor doesn't have advice for, doesn't know how to navigate. And so then being able to turn to that community and get mentorship from that can, can really help round out the mentorship experience. But really at its core, we see that girls with disabilities have less role models in general. They have less representation, they see less opportunities for themselves. And so giving them a mentor who is further along or sometimes a peer mentor helps them see the options like we were saying earlier. And so that's really a huge part of what we want to do because it can be really isolating, especially for people who are newer to their disability or young girls, it can be really isolating to not know anyone like you. And so even just having that example can really mean a lot of difference and can help you get past some of like your anxieties or the things that make you feel bad about your disability. We want people to understand disability as a neutral thing and in some cases a positive thing. We don't want people to, to feel like they are in a negative position because they're disabled.

Marsh Naidoo (11:54):

You guys have some amazing programs that I've been reading about and one of those programs is the camp that you'll hold. Tell us more about the camp, Sophie.

Sophie Poost (12:06):

Yeah, so we always joke that EmpowHer Camp is probably not the best name for it because it's not just a camp. So EmpowHer Camp is a year-long mentoring program. We start with a trip to the Adirondacks. We take a variety of girls. This year we're looking at taking 10 girls. Last year we took six and the year before we took nine. So it depends on a lot of variables, but we take about 10 girls to camp in the Adirondacks for a week. We teach them independent living skills. We have someone who helps them learn how to cook or finds accessible tools to cook. We talk about emergency preparedness. People with disabilities are often disadvantaged position during emergencies because of a multitude of reasons, like lack of transportation, needs for medication, certain expectations for their lives that you can't meet in an emergency.

(12:55):

So talking about how do you survive an emergency, how do you plan for that? And basic survival skills, how do you read a map, how do you like, use a compass? And kind of helping them learn how to navigate our thinking and philosophy is that if you can do this in the wilderness, if you can do this without electricity, then you can do this at home, you can do this anywhere. So we do that for a week and across the week they get to know other disabled women who are going to be, one of them will be their mentors essentially. So across the week, they get to know all these disabled women who also come to camp, support them, help them with everything. At camp, we're a very independently running group, but we're interdependent in that everyone's helping each other. And midway through the week we make up matches.

(13:40):

So each teenage girl is paired with a mentor that they'll be working with across the year, and they come up with a project where they'll be working on emergency preparedness and response in their community. So each girl will come up with a variety of different opportunities and projects that they might come up with with their mentor. And then across the next year, they work with their mentor, generally, virtually, sometimes, you know, texting, phone calls. I've gotten a few Instagram dms from my mentee <laugh>helping them kind of carry out that project. And the projects are all fast and dependent on each individual's skills and interests and what matters to them in their community. So for example, right now we have a girl who's working on getting evacuation chairs in her school. She's a wheelchair user, and her school is multiple stories. And so if she's not on the first floor during an emergency, she doesn't get to leave the school.

(14:36):

So her project is working on evacuation chairs in her school. We have one individual who's making a comic book on how to prepare and survive a flood. We have you know, another girl who wrote a story on how to prepare and survive a flood that can be used for autistic people to help them understand. We have, we had one girl who wrote a white paper, did a bunch of research and wrote a white paper on gun violence and how schools are unprepared for students when it comes to gun violence. So the spectrum is big and it's dependent on a whole host of things. You know, some of our girls are 18 and some of our girls are 14, and so their projects might look different and different disabilities mean they might be interested in different things. And so everyone kind of picks their own project and molds it themselves and then works with their mentor across the year to actually carry out that project.

(15:30):

We're coming up now on June, which is when their projects are supposed to be done. So everyone's wrapping up their projects so that in July they will all have a reunion trip in DC and during the reunion trip they'll share about their project with each other as well as members of the disability community in DC emergency management folks in DC. And then they'll go and talk to their representative and share their project with their representative. We want our youth to understand that their voices matter, and that that means if something's happening that doesn't seem fair, but they can't control it. Going to an elected official is really important and knowing how to talk to them is really important. So we have them do that. And then of course, we're in DC so you know, we have to go see the monuments, see the M L K monument, see the F D R monument, see the Washington Monument, go to the White House.

(16:22):

So we get to do the tourist thing. And then we'll always, of course, also, the museums there are incredible, so we'll go to museums as well. And it's just an opportunity for them to celebrate their work across the year. And then of course, you know, we continue to support them. So our goal is to support all of the participants moving forward. We don't want them to feel like, oh, you did this year and now you're gone. So we continue to have events with them. We do check-in calls every quarter, or maybe it's six months. We have like a big get-together where we play games and, and have a Zoom chat and just hang out. And so we're continuing to create that relationship. We believe that if you are connected for that year, that's more likely to have a sustained relationship than to come to camp for a week and then maybe you'll stay connected. And the really incredible thing is that everyone's coming from across the country. And so, you know, we have some girls who are going to college now or looking at colleges and they're like, oh my gosh, if I went to college in Chicago, I'm only two hours from so-and-so, maybe we could meet up. So it's really cool to see that continued foster relationship

Marsh Naidoo (17:31):

Relationships.

Sophie Poost (17:32):

Yeah.

Marsh Naidoo (17:33):

How does, how does it work in terms of a young lady with a disability that wants to enroll in the camp?

Sophie Poost (17:42):

Yeah, of course. So unfortunately at this point, we have our class selected for this summer, but looking towards next summer, our applications usually open at the beginning of the calendar year. And the application is two parts. One part is a parent filled out part or a guardian and the other part is filled out by the person who wants to come to camp. And our goal with that is that we know that parents have one perspective of their child and might have more knowledge or might be more aware of their child. And, you know, we also want to know what the child thinks. They may or may not be self-aware of, you know, the fact that they might not be great at not having electricity for a week, but their parent might be up to speak to that. So kind of having two sections of the application, we learn about, you learn about what you understand of disability representation or if you have it need, like what are your goals as a leader?

(18:36):

What, what goals do you have in general? We are not looking for like this cream of the crop person who has their life put together. We're not, you know, Princeton or Harvard. We're, we're looking for teenage girls who would benefit from a program like this. And so we have an application process. Like I said, we have recently instituted a, a double deadline kind of system. So if you apply by a certain date, our review committee will look at your application earlier and tell you like the results of your application, just so you know, if someone applies like the first day of the application's out, they're not waiting until months later when all of the applications are in. So we have two deadlines, the first deadline, and then we'll review those applications. If someone's not accepted in that first review, they'll still be considered in the second review.

(19:25):

So it, it doesn't necessarily mean you like you're in or out kind of thing, it just means some people will know earlier. Our review committee is made up of mentors, of current participants, of people who have finished the program. I apologize if you can hear my dog barking at the mailman. But we have a, a whole committee of disabled women kind of giving their perspective on the application. And our goal is always to build a, a group that we think can, you know, get along together that are ready for an experience like this. And are, are interested and willing to grow because we know as, as adults that there's always room to grow. But sometimes, you know, as a younger person, you can have a lot of confidence in yourself, which is great, but you also need to understand like there's always room to grow.

(20:17):

And so that's something that we also always wanna see is people who are willing to put themselves outside of their comfort zone and, and grow with us. So that's the application process. We'll let you know if you're accepted and then we start to have meetings to understand what you might need to be successful at camp, what your routines are, whether you take medications, what those medications come in, like if you need an attendant or any kind of assistance, what that looks like. So we kind of get a sense of what, what we might to plan for. And we also have like a fundraising requirement. Our programs are free to everyone. We don't want money to be a barrier, but we also want everyone to come in with a bit of a success. I think a lot of times the youth in our programs don't realize the community needs that already support them. And so honestly, everyone does really well at fundraising. We, we see everyone, you know, asking grandma, asking an aunt, asking an uncle like Hey, can you chip in? And everyone meets their goals pretty easily because they already have those communities that support them. And if they don't, we're here to help them brainstorm of how they can fundraise. But our goal is that you can come into camp already, haven't gotten a big win already, having practice communicating and talking to your community and getting to know everyone.

Marsh Naidoo (21:32):

Sophie, thank you so much for that information that has been immensely invaluable. Is there anything that you would like the listeners to know before we sign off? And can we also please get the contact information for those young persons interested in learning more about Disability EmpowHer Network?

Sophie Poost (21:58):

Yeah, absolutely. I think the one thing I would wanna plug is that we of course want everyone to apply during EmPowHer Camp, but because that's several months away, I just wanted to offer another opportunity that is open all year round to, to disabled girls or women, which is our "Letter from a Role Model" program where you or a family member can nominate herself, nominate for a letter from a disabled woman who is already established in her career. And so we have a short form on our website that you can fill out, and then our team will look through and we have all of these women lined up who are interested in being mentors who will write a letter to you. So we'll kind of look at what your interests are, what your hobbies are, what your goals are, what your disability is, and match you with someone who will write you a letter.

(22:47):

And potentially you can start a pen pal relationship. And we believe that even having that kind of encouragement can really help. So if, if you're interested in getting involved, but are worried like, oh, camp's not gonna happen for a while, that's definitely a way that anyone can get involved, especially if it's a younger child who is not old enough for camp yet. That's a great way to get set up with a mentor, get involved with our organization. So yeah, so that would be my like little plug for if you wanted to do something else. As for communicating, you can check out our website disabilityempowhernetwork.org. That's Empower with an H in the middle, em P O W H E R. And you can email me at Sophie@disabilityempowher network.org to learn more about any opportunities to get involved or to learn about the programs we have. You can also find us on social media. I don't know if I know those tags off the top of my head. I know that our Disability Empower Network is our Instagram handle. And you can look us up on Facebook Disability EmpowHer Network and you'll find us because we're the only ones that exist. So yeah, that's my plug.

Marsh Naidoo (24:02):

Sophie, thank you so much for your time today. And I just absolutely admire and love the work that's been done by Disability EmpowHer Network And guys, I'm just gonna spell that out quickly. It's e m p o w, H as in Harry, e r network. So please go ahead and, and give them a look-see, just really great resources. Well, young lady, we will see you the next time, hopefully soon, Sophie.

Sophie Poost (24:50):

Yeah, and thank you for having me and hopefully, we can, you know, help more people out there.

Marsh Naidoo (24:57):

Guys, thank you for listening along on the podcast today. I can't wait to invite Sophie Poost back with a group of the young ladies that attend the camp to find out more about that experience, perhaps in the Fall. Just a little bit of good news. The Raising Kellan Podcast has won the Public Awareness Award from Arc Tennessee, and this presentation happened at the Mega Disability Conference in Nashville at the end of May. All right, guys that's about it for today. Just one more thing. We do have a live in-person event coming up on August, 26th in Dyersburg, Tennessee. This is an event for parents, caregivers grandparents, educators, and therapists. The conference will target such topics such as financial and future planning, education, IEPs, transitional services, vocational services, and much more. So stay tuned for further details. And as always, remember, get to the top of your mountain. This is Marsh Naidoo signing off.