President and CEO of Disability Network of Southwest Michigan, Yvonne Fleener joins host Lynne Jarman-Johnson to discuss disability pride, community engagement and the organization’s vital work in breaking down barriers for individuals with disabilities.

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0:00:06.3 Lynne Jarman-Johnson: Welcome in, I’m Lynne Jarman-Johnson with Consumers Credit Union. It’s Money I’m Home and we have everything from finance to fitness. Today, we are focusing on community. I’m so excited to introduce you today to Yvonne Fleener. Now, she is the CEO, the President of Disability Network of Southwest Michigan. Congratulations.

0:00:27.4 Yvonne Fleener: Thank you very much. I’m so excited to be here. I love this work and I love this job so much.

0:00:33.5 LJJ: Well, I read a little bit about you and your history and how you came to understand disability. I love the fact that you talk about the fact that, you know what, look, disability can come to anybody and any family at any time.

0:00:47.4 YF: Yeah, definitely. The one thing about disability is that, like you just said, it can happen to anyone at any time. You can be born with a disability, you can be diagnosed with something at a later age or you might have a car accident or a stroke or something where you find yourself having a disability. And we can’t forget aging, right?

0:01:07.3 LJJ: Absolutely.

0:01:07.5 YF: ‘Cause my father-in-law, I didn’t call it disability, but he’s 95, can’t hear well, can’t see, has mobility issues. Those are disabilities. So, the more we create a world where we’re thinking about disability broadly, the better off we’ll all be.

0:01:23.5 LJJ: You have a personal story as to how you really decided to focus and have this become your passion.

0:01:29.4 YF: Yeah, definitely. My sister is a year older than me, her name is Tricia, and she was born with a disability. Patricia’s never been able to speak, and she’s unable to use sign language or type or anything. And so, she’s really had to find unique ways to communicate. And so, I’ve always found myself helping to be her voice, knowing her so well, so being able to say, “Well, this is what she likes,” or “This is what she wants.” And that’s what’s so important to me about what we do at Disability Network, is we help people find their voices. We do lots of stuff. We get people driver’s license, we advocate for people, we help them in classrooms. But at the end of the day, it’s about helping people find their voice, sometimes literally, or sometimes figuratively, just building that confidence in themselves to speak up for themselves.

0:02:21.0 LJJ: Consumers is such a proud partner with you on the road to really help build that awareness, and even things that companies do on a day-to-day basis. We are constantly looking at our web to tweak it to make sure that the colors are accurate, that the typeface is big enough, that things that you really don’t think about on an everyday basis, that can mean a world of difference.

0:02:46.9 YF: Definitely. Thank you. And thank you for doing that, and we really appreciate your partnership too. And there are so many companies who are really wanting that kind of information of how do we do better, how do we serve the disability community, not only as customers, but also as potential employees. There’s a whole workforce out there of people with disabilities that’s really been an untapped market. And if we can help companies figure out, okay, how do we design a job, how do we accommodate? Or even what does the job posting look like so that a person with a disability might apply? That can really extend the diversity of a company, and that’s what we do well, is really help companies think about those things.

0:03:26.9 LJJ: Well, and just the talent shortage alone, it’s starting to think differently about how can we help someone. We like to say here at Consumers, we want you to bring your whole self to work.

0:03:38.1 YF: Love that.

0:03:39.4 LJJ: And feel very comfortable, when you’re working. And I think the thing that I love about your website is you talk about the word barriers. That barriers is a difficulty, and your brain will put a barrier in and you don’t even know it.

0:03:55.2 YF: Yeah. And we like to think about barriers as the barrier is the thing in the community. So, I have a disability, but I’m not the barrier. The barrier is if I used a wheelchair, is being unable to go up the stairs. So, if we as a community can fix those barriers, then people with disabilities can live alongside all of us and be active participants in our workforce, in our community, in all of those things.

0:04:21.7 LJJ: July is here already, it’s a beautiful summer here in West Michigan, and in Southwest Michigan and across the country, we’re celebrating Disability Pride Month. I have seen some fascinating new billboards out there, some excitement around the D word. Let’s talk about it.

0:04:37.0 YF: Yeah, so our campaign this year is called #DWord (hashtag D-Word), and it’s really highlighting that disability is not a bad word. My generation grew up of it’s not polite, that you don’t talk about those things. Or if someone, you see someone, like my sister, people will often sort of skim her and then look away or ignore her because they think it’s polite, when really what that is is being unseen. So, my sister may not talk, but she has a voice. Or people with disabilities in general, it’s part of who they are, and they want to talk about it, and they want you to be curious about it and ask questions. And so, thinking about disability is not a bad word, it’s just part of life. It isn’t bad, it isn’t good, it just is, is a way that we really want to highlight in this campaign. So very excited about it.

0:05:34.8 LJJ: Your organization does so much. Tell us about the things as you’re walking in the door, what is so eye-opening to you and what you’re really proud about.

0:05:44.7 YF: Yeah. Okay, I’ll see if I can say this without crying, it always makes me so emotional because the daily impact that I see on a person’s life is, it really is … It’s really powerful. So, we have people who come to our door who need immediate help. They’re unhoused, or they’re in a mental health crisis, or their child considered suicide or there’s something big going on in their life that they need immediate help with. And we have trained people who assist with all of those, help with resources, connecting, walking them through things. But then we also, that continuum goes all the way to that systems change, right? ‘Cause the people showing up at our door are going to continue to show up until we can fix the things, the barriers, and the systems that need to be changed in order for whatever that issue is to go away.

0:06:40.3 YF: So, on a daily basis, I see that with individuals. Just one quick story, we have something called the Advocacy Academy, which is working with young adults, and it’s that helping find your voice. They pick a project and they advocate for the systems change goal. But when I meet that … I meet them on the first day that they’re with us, and they’re there for eight weeks. They’re kind of timid and shy, and then at the very end, they’ve gone through this whole process. They’re different people. I mean, they’re visibly different people, and that work to me is so powerful. And wherever they go after that eight weeks, they’ll always have that confidence in who they are. So, it’s so cool.

0:07:21.4 LJJ: I was just going to say, confidence building. Just amazing.

0:07:22.6 YF: Yeah.

0:07:25.0 LJJ: So, tell me about the services and how can people reach out, especially right now if you’re listening, and you are in and had no idea that your services existed. Tell us about what you can do and what people can do out listening.

0:07:40.9 YF: Yeah. Well, I’m glad you asked that because we often say we’re the best kept secret, and we don’t want to be a secret. So again, thank you to the Consumers Credit Union for helping us get this word out there. There are lots of ways. If you go to our website, which is Disability Network Southwest Michigan, so it’s the acronym of that, dnswm.org, you can email us through that. You can do a web request, phone call. You can show up at our door, and we have people who will help you immediately.

0:08:09.3 LJJ: Where are your locations?

0:08:10.2 YF: So, we have three locations. We serve all of Southwest Michigan, the eight-county typical Southwest region, and we have an office in St. Joe, and we have an office in Battle Creek and then an office in Kalamazoo. And we try to also hold office hours in other counties and other places where we know people are already going. So, lots of ways to reach us, and please do reach out. If we can’t help you, we’ll find who can.

0:08:36.5 LJJ: Well, and isn’t that, that’s the joy of having the collaboration of saying, look, we know the organizations and the resources that might be in your community, and we can get you there.

0:08:48.8 YF: Definitely. Absolutely. We have lots of great partnerships. There are so many other organizations who have the talent or the capacity to do those specific things that maybe we don’t do, but we have those connections to them and can help you find them.

0:09:03.2 LJJ: So, you’re looking in your crystal ball. What are you thinking?

0:09:07.1 YF: Oh, wow. I really think that one of the roles for us is to really look at that, the accessibility in the community, and you touched upon one of it. When we think about accessibility, we think about the physical pieces, and a lot of the physical pieces under the Americans with Disabilities Act, which we celebrate in July under Disability Pride Month, a lot of those physical pieces, the ADA businesses and the community has done those.

0:09:30.8 YF: But there’s so much more, like the digital pieces. Is your website accessible? Is your kiosk accessible? If someone comes to your hotel or restaurant, is the hostess, if you use a wheelchair, up here, or do you have a spot, a reception desk that’s lower? Do you think about plain language? So, there’s so many other ways to think about accessibility in addition to the physical pieces, and that’s where I really see our region excelling at and having a lot of interest in excelling at.

0:10:01.9 LJJ: When you look at the partners that you have, how important is community engagement and the volunteering and really having people learn how to communicate when we’re talking about—we need to really build awareness of disability?

0:10:17.2 YF: Yeah, we really do depend on volunteers. We have volunteers who work at our front desk. We have volunteers who help us build ramps, which is part of, speaking of physical accessibility, we help homeowners or renters get a ramp in their house, which is a big need in our community. We often have a waiting list for that, so having volunteers assist with either raising the funds for it or helping to actually get out a … I was going to say hammer, but I don’t think that’s right, a drill, I think, and help them build those ramps is really critical.

0:10:45.3 YF: But the community partners, just having people want just to be curious. Tell me more. How can we improve? And we see our role as assisting. We never want to go to a business and say, you’re doing it all wrong. We want to say, hey, here’s some low-hanging fruit of how you could improve or enhance your services, and then here’s some bigger things that maybe you want to make as part of your strategic plan or build towards. So those partners are really key. We can’t make this a fully accessible community without community partners being invested.

0:11:24.4 LJJ: Well, and it’s really interesting. It’s tiny little things, isn’t it? I mean, there was a point in time that I had hurt my foot, and so I was in a boot, on a wheelchair-type stroller thing. And I never, you take for granted, where is the handicapped door button? You take for granted the things that you have never thought about before, but what a drastic change could be if it was over a little bit closer to the door, or whatever those things might be. And I think that’s the point of saying, boy, you know what, if you’ve faced a disability, write down the things that bothered you, and it’s okay to share that to help people improve.

0:12:06.4 YF: Definitely. Yeah, and I think in today’s world people are really open to that conversation and they want to hear it. When you say that it reminds me, how many times have you gone to a grocery store and you got your hands full, and you hip-checked that little handicap accessible button. Or if you have a stroller, and you’re in the park, and you’ve got that, it’s called a curb cut, but their little ramp that you don’t have to go up and down the curb, those are all things that happen because of the Americans with Disabilities Act and people with disabilities. And so, we all do benefit, and sometimes take for granted, but that’s okay. It’s good that we’re now getting used to a world that’s accessible for people.

0:12:47.2 LJJ: And needs to be.

0:12:48.8 YF: Yeah, because we’ll just continue to grow that and make it even better.

0:12:52.3 LJJ: Well, we cannot thank you enough. I’m really excited about your new venture.

0:12:53.3 YF: Thank you.

0:12:54.0 LJJ: And congratulations again.

0:12:57.2 YF: Thank you.

0:13:01.5 LJJ: And if you do have any volunteer experience, if you’re a carpenter, or you just want to help people and smile and greet, hey, make sure you get in touch with Disability Network of Southwest Michigan. The website again?

0:13:10.1 YF: Dnswm.org. So, Disability Network Southwest Michigan.

0:13:19.6 LJJ: And I’ll tell you, Yvonne, she’s going to personally answer the phone. And she’s …

0:13:19.7 YF: Yes. I’ll take your call.

0:13:22.1 LJJ: Take your call. Thank you so much.

0:13:23.7 YF: Thank you so much for having us. We appreciate it.

0:13:27.3 LJJ: I’m Lynne Jarman-Johnson. Money, I’m Home.

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