Stay Informed!

By Sean Luechtefeld on 08/04/2010 @ 05:31 PM

Tags: Innovation, Innovators, Economic Inclusion

Today we’re featuring guest blogger Tom Foley. Tom is a CFED Innovative Idea Champion (selected in 2009) and Deputy Director and Program Director for the World Institute on Disability. If you have questions for Tom, send him an email.

Asset building – and its attendant tools and strategies – represents an under-utilized and under-discussed opportunity for people with disabilities to improve their employment and economic lives. Through asset building principles, people with disabilities can own their own homes, fund retirement accounts, continue economically empowering educations and even start a business. These kinds of outcomes are nearly absent from the current discussion within the disability community. There is an unspoken relationship between asset building and employment. Earnings from employment are necessary to participate in most asset building programs, but, by the same token, asset building outcomes like retirement accounts and personal autonomy encourage and motivate people to risk employment. How can we continue to work together to reach out and include more people with disabilities in asset building programs and begin to change the economic expectation for people with disabilities?

I think Tom raises a hugely important point about the relationship between asset building and employment for people with disabilities. While employment renders the necessary income for asset building practices, asset building practices necessarily open doors for employment. As Tom points out, the disability field and the assets field will be well-served by working together on these important issues.

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