Project Overview

In October 2005, the Center on Disability Studies, a University Center for Excellence, at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa was awarded a three-year collaborative grant from the Corporation for National and Community Service. The Center on Disability Studies (CDS) was a sub-grantee of the primary grantee, UCLA’s Tarjan Center. Other collaborators were the University of Miami’s Mailman Center, and the mainland Hands-On Network. The CDS portion of the grant was approximately $270,000. The overall purpose of the Alliance for Inclusion Advancement-Hawai‘i (AIA-HI) was to increase the capacity of individuals with disabilities to participate in volunteer opportunities and to act as a catalyst in enhancing the ability of service organizations to include volunteers with disabilities in their programs. CDS worked on the islands of O‘ahu, the Big Island of Hawai‘i, and Maui, to advance the participation of youth, 14 and older, adults with disabilities, including veterans, in community service. Overall, individuals with disabilities contributed more than 28,000 volunteer hours on the three islands. For more specific details on numbers and the project see the Paying It Forward newsletter at: http://www.aia.hawaii.edu/newsletter/ and the AIA-HI Toolkit at: http://www.aia.hawaii.edu/toolkit/