More About "Awareness"
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Baristanet Staff, Baristanet.com
Last week, I asked, What Is "Awareness"? … specifically, what is "Disability Awareness?" Today I read an article about a disability awareness campaign involving filmed interviews in Montclair, New Jersey, organized by the Montclair Township Advisory Committee for People with Disabilities. In the article, Committee Member Lily Vakili says:
“The film was born out of the Committee’s interest in helping the broader community better understand what disability means and that, with education, familiarity and compassion, we can each choose to create a more integrated and supportive community."
This seems like a good start on what "Disability Awareness" might mean. We want people to "understand what disability means". The reason we want this is that we believe understanding will lead to "a more integrated and supportive community" for people with disabilities.
Not compassion or sentiment ... integration and support. These can be related to compassion and sentiment, but they aren't dependent on them. They don't even really depend on social acceptance.
The next questions? What do "integration" and "support" mean?