County-wide coalition seeks to share disability advocacy efforts

By Channing Heiss CONTRIBUTOR

Finding disability-related resources can be a journey not unlike trying to machete one’s way through a jungle, trudging through red tape, confusion, irrelevant web references, and dead ends. Even with the availability of the internet and the existence of numerous public and private organizations, some of the best information on current resources can elude even the most dogged researcher.

A major issue has been that many organizations in this area have been doing important work for years while often having little if any knowledge of one another’s activities. As a result, opportunities for collaboration, innovation and coordinated advocacy were lost. In 2013, a group of local advocates sought to change all of that, and the Beaufort County disAbilities Coalition (BCDC) was born. David Green approached colleagues on the Human Services Commission and proposed creating the coalition to share ideas, provide mutual support, strengthen advocacy power, and avoid duplication of efforts.

Green is the director of business de-