The Internet offers us wonderful opportunities for generating a productive dialogue. I look forward to using this page of our Web site to share with you ideas that are making it to the forefront of our discussions in this larger endeavor that we call "Community Bridges".

Within the organization, we periodically hold discussion groups where employees from different vantage points share perspectives on a recent article or topic. There are also times when family groups, self-advocates, provider organizations, or local non-profits stimulate discussions that shed light on a contemporary issue that has direct impact on the goals of our organization. Civic organizations like the local Rotary clubs also create occasions for formal presentations.

I will share as many of these as possible with you on this "Notes from the Executive Director" page. Please return often and feel free to offer your feedback!

-Roy Gerstenberger, Executive Director

Message #1, June, 2002: Strengthening our community, one relationship at a time.

Community Bridges began its work in 1982 as a result of a good idea. That idea was that, if people could participate at a local level to control and manage the resources available to support people who experience disabilities, then good things would happen. Over the previous 80 years, an entirely different idea was explored in the state of New Hampshire, but ours was a new era of the "area agency".

Our work since our founding has been to take the promise inherent in that good idea and to let it flower and unfold into all of the possible variations that are necessary as people with disabilities and their families speak to us about their vision of life in community.

When you look at your children, you do not see a bundle of disabilities, you see a gift to the world.

We keep the promise alive by maintaining this vision. That vision is nothing more and nothing less than seeing the world through the eyes of caring brothers, sisters, moms, and dads.

As a professional, I have had to learn to see this way. And what I have learned - or rather what I have learned to remember-is that when you look at your children, you do not see a bundle of disabilities, you see a gift to the world.

Community Bridges offers many things to many people throughout their lives. We meet young infants just after they are born and we spend time with people in their final moments before death. What happens in between-we hope-is what people ask us for rather than what we simply tell them they must have. And it is somehow fitting that one of the greatest things that we can now offer people after these twenty years is the stories of success of those individuals and families who have taken the journey before and can now offer such hope for the future. We ask each person to begin by mapping a full life for the future and see how this act of courage and imagination can change the present.

The "imagined future" for Community Bridges begins with our mission statement:

Community Bridges will advance the integration, growth and interdependence of people with disabilities within their own communities.

You are reading this at this moment and understand it in different ways-seeing different things. I can read this and see the need to build, advocate for, and maintain, the best formal support services possible for people who experience disabilities. This has been an important part of our work in the past and will remain so in the future. But others will understand that the interdependence of life in the community happens when people share their gifts. To borrow a phrase: "There is no way to relationships, relationships are The Way".

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Tradition, fellowship, sanctuary, intimacy, caring, love-can never be purchased through any system.

When we look back on those stories of success where someone has achieved a good life and examine the common factors, it appears that most often it is where influence was exerted-often from classmates, associates, and family members-to form a rich and powerful web of relationships for the person. These relationships "weather the storm" of turmoil that comes with modern life and often make critical connections that bring solutions to problems that may otherwise confound the formal service system that we try so diligently to build. No amount of paid support can ever match the quality of these ties. Although we would like to say that we can offer full lives and friendly support in the day for people with disabilities, the reality underlying this is that the true ingredients for these things-tradition, fellowship, sanctuary, intimacy, caring, love-can never be purchased through any system. It is time for us to invite others in or get out of the way so that these things can happen. This is an interesting lesson for a large human service agency to learn! However, as an area agency, if we lose the capacity to learn we will surely travel the same path as the last "good idea" that preceded us. The approximately 90-year life span of the institutional system in New Hampshire was not entirely one that reflected the dark days of over-crowding, neglect, and abuse that it became known for and that eventually led to the final closure. When originally opened, it represented an effort by the legislature to create a more caring and compassionate alternative for 57 children who previously lived in "almshouses" where lack of attention and overcrowding had led to many deaths. The problem, of course, was that the segregation of people planted the seeds of oppression, carelessness, and stereotyping by the larger society.

How much are we borrowing from the institutional approach that preceded us?

The question that confronts us today is whether the continued public promotion of our formal services as the answer to the "needs" of people with disabilities contradicts what we are learning? Does it send the message to those who want to simply reach out and form relationships with those who experience disabilities that they need to ask for permission or special guidance from "the professionals"? How much are we borrowing from the institutional approach that preceded us? These are exciting questions to explore if we return to the original purpose for our creation. Community Bridges was created based on the idea that if people could participate at a local level to control and manage the resources available to support people who experience disabilities then good things would happen. The past twenty years has taught us that this is not an endeavor that requires a college degree in "special education". Instead, this is one that requires heart, soul, and commitment to the idea that there is something about being together that can work, even in the most difficult situations, if we think about strengthening our community one relationship at a time. If you are ready, come and join us!

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