The Future Looks Bright After Presenting at My First Family Café:, By Jason Hahr

 

It is time to put virtual pen to paper once again. The Voiceless Minority has been silent for the last two months, and we apologize for that. As anyone who is an activist for any cause knows, advocacy never stops. We recognize that our silence over the last two months not only affects us personally, but also significantly impacts The Voiceless Minority as a whole. That being said, let’s transition into today’s post.

On June 14th, Michelle Zeman, Samantha Lebron, and I gave a presentation at the 27th Annual Family Café, which told the story of the Voiceless Minority, at least, up until now. For those who are not aware, The Family Café is a Florida-based organization that has held the largest disability resource expo in the United States for the last 27 years.

According to their website, The Family Café began in 1998 when a group of parents of children with disabilities recognized their shared challenge in finding the information, resources, and knowledge they required to facilitate their children’s educational development. In response to this need, they came together to found The Family Café, an organization with a mission to provide individuals with disabilities and their families with opportunities for Collaboration, Advocacy, Friendship, and Empowerment by serving as a facilitator of communication, a space for dialogue, and a source of information.

To fulfill that mission, The Family Café created its signature event, The Annual Family Café. It would provide a unique environment where families can connect with peers, commercial service providers, and public entities to discover the services available to them, identify which ones best serve their needs, and learn how to access those services, all in a family-friendly, welcoming environment that emphasizes community and inclusion.

Since its inception, The Annual Family Café has grown from about 1,200 attendees to more than 15,000 at its peak, becoming the largest statewide cross-disability event in the nation. The Family Café has always believed that well-informed people make the best possible decisions for themselves and their loved ones. The Annual Family Café provides the opportunity to put that principle into action. The event brings together thousands of Floridians with disabilities and their family members for three-plus days of information, training, and networking opportunities.

The idea of bringing together a wide range of information on various disability-related topics is central to the event, which is designed to provide families with the opportunity to identify and take advantage of the content most relevant to their specific needs in a supportive environment that fosters family-to-family connections. The core of the event consists of hour-long individual educational breakout sessions that comprise the bulk of the agenda. In addition to individual breakout sessions, The Family Café also hosts a series of three keynote events at The Annual Family Café to highlight important topics that are relevant to people with disabilities and their families and encourages dialogue and engagement between Floridians with disabilities and the state agencies and elected officials that serve them by hosting The Annual Summit on Disabilities. It also features a large Exhibit Hall with a variety of vendors, adaptive recreation activities, self-advocate musical performances, and much more.  

The Family Café prides itself on supporting people with disabilities and their families as they seek to build lives in the community every day of the year. As successful as it is, The Annual Family Café is only one aspect of The Family Café’s ongoing efforts to serve the disability community.

I couldn’t put into words what I experienced at The Family Café any better than their website did. I had attended the event before with my family, but this was the first time I had presented on behalf of The Voiceless. We gave a presentation, but we also had a table in the exhibit hall where we met about forty people who expressed interest in our movement. Overall, the event was a resounding success. We were even invited to speak in August at another event that The Family Café puts on, The Florida Youth Summit. The Florida Youth Summit is an event specifically designed for young people with disabilities in the state of Florida.

I can’t speak for Michelle or Sam, but I am thrilled to be given another excellent opportunity to expand The Voiceless Minority's reach and amplify our voice. The event takes place on August 8th and 9th in Orlando. Although we didn’t preview The Family Café itself, we will be writing extensively about The Florida Youth Summit.

 

Until next time, your Friendly Neighborhood, Super Advocate, and Proud Member of The Voiceless Minority,

 Jay