THANK YOU for coming to this page.   Yeah, I'm asking you to give some money.  But more accurately, I'm asking you to invest in our community.   I'm the Treasurer for the Board of Directors for Living Independently For Everyone, Center for Independent Living (LIFE-Center for Independent Living).   We are a non-profit CIL chartered to advocate and promote independence for people with disabilities of any kind.   The Center's function is not to DO things for people, but to help them do things for themselves.  It's the old story of either giving someone a fish and feeding them for a day, or teaching them to fish and feeding them forever.  To do that, the Center will help people find resources, help them negotiate bureaucracies, teach them to advocate for themselves, or go to bat for them.  

I am blessed to be a TAB-  That means "Temporarily Able Bodied".  We never know what might happen.  One of our board members was a successful Realtor until he fell through a ceiling.  That put him into a chair for the rest of his life.  One of our staff members was injured in an accident while a teenager and went into a chair.    Accessibility is something so many of us take for granted.  But when you find that the normal system is denied to you because you're in a chair, or your eyes don't work the way most peoples' do, or you can't hear like other folks do, you find that the system doesn't work.

We have recently been involved with a deaf person who was told by the judge at a trial to "read my lips" and who was refused a sign-language interpreter.  Our Center is working with that person to get proper legal assistance.  We help people move out of nursing homes into their own homes.  There are huge numbers of people in nursing homes at taxpayers' expense and can't get out ultimately because the nursing homes make money off them.  Through our Community Reintegration program, we help them get money for furniture, security deposits, kitchen utensils, and to move out where they can be productive contributors to society.  And it saves the State money when they move out of the nursing homes.

That picture on the left is a former board member after he cast his first private ballot.  Tim's blind, and until two years ago he always had to have someone vote for him because there were no accommodations for vision impaired voters.  He had to tell someone who he wanted to vote for, and trust them to mark the ballot as he wished.

On April 25th, we are having our annual "Wheel-A-Thon".  This is a combination of an opportunity to "walk a mile in someone else's shoes", or more correctly ride a quarter mile in someone else's wheel chair.  But it's so much more than that.  We'll have representative of many organizations who provide services, we'll have drawings, we'll have food, and we'll have FUN.   So, what am I asking you to do?

First, make an investment from the money God has given you to help.   We rely on government funding through specific grants for most of our work.  The problem is that those grants frequently do not allow us to allocate funds for things like copy paper, additional Internet services (our Pontiac manger uses 'net conferencing due to her hearing impairment), etc.  And the grants are tied to specific functions limiting our ability to reach out more.  So, your investment to the Center allows us to do more of the work we need to do.

Second, if you're in the Bloomington/Normal area, consider getting a team of friends, co-workers, church family, etc. to raise money.  There are prizes for the teams that raise the most money.

Third, come to the Wheel-A-Thon on Saturday April 25 and see what we do, talk to people who may not be just like you on the surface, and have fun with us.

Donating through this website is simple, fast, and totally secure. It is also the most efficient way to support my fundraising efforts.

Many thanks for your support -- and don't forget to forward this to anyone who you think might want to donate too!

John Evans