 Major sponsors for Ableton on Air include Green Mountain Support Services, empowering people with disabilities to live home in the community, Washington County Mental Health, where hope and support come together. Media sponsors for Ableton on Air include Park Chester Times, Muslim Community Report, WWW, this is the Bronx dot info, Associated Press Media Editors, New York Power Online Newspaper, U.S. Press Corps Domestic and International, Anchor FM and Spotify. Partners for Ableton on Air include the HOD of New York and New England, where everyone belongs, the Orthodox Union, the Division for the Blind and Visually Impaired of Vermont, the Vermont Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired, Central Vermont Habitat for Humanity and Montpelier Sustainable Coalition, Montefiore Medical Center of the Bronx, Roosevelt Kennedy Center of Bronx, New York, Albert Einstein College of Medicine of the Bronx, Ableton on Air has been seen in the following publications, Park Chester Times, WWW, this is the Bronx dot com, New York Power Online Newspaper, Muslim Community Report, WWW dot H dot com, and the Montpelier Bridge. Ableton on Air is part of the following organizations, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Boston, New England Chapter, and the Society of Professional Journalists. Welcome to this edition of Ableton on Air, the one and only program that focuses on the needs, concerns, and achievements of the different label. I've always been your host Lauren Seiler. I'm Lauren Seiler. This is our year in review edition of Ableton on Air. We would like to say thank you to our sponsors, Washington County Mental Health, Green Mountain Support Services, and many others, including the partnerships with Higher Ability Vermont, the Division for the Blind and Visually Impaired, and the Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired, and many others. We would like to thank them and thank our sponsors for a wonderful 2022, and we look forward to 2023. Let us begin by showing you some clips from 2022. We begin with this very important fact. It's extremely important for Vermonters, as well as people of the world and globally, and everybody who is challenged to have appropriate housing for people with special needs. Let's take a look at a clip from Zachary. Zachariah. Thank you. From Zachariah Watson, Executive Director of Habitat for Humanity of Central Vermont. Let's take a look at this clip. It's simple, don't know what are the missions and goals of Central Vermont Habitat for Humanity. Thanks, Larry. Central Vermont Habitat for Humanity is a 501C3, it's a Christian ecumenical non-profit, and we build affordable housing for home ownership. So we have a couple programs. We do home repairs, we help with home access to help people stay in their home as they age, and we also build homes and rehabilitate homes and work with income-sensitive Vermonters in Central Vermont to provide them with a home that is theirs with an affordable mortgage. As a Christian organization, our mission is to is spreading the love of God and by providing shelter for those who need it and our vision is creating a world where everyone has a place to live. Anne Watson, Senator. Okay, let's take a look at Anne Watson who is running for Senator. Let's take a look at this clip on Ableton on Air. Tell us more. You're going to be running for Senator, and let's start there. Why the Washington District? Why did you decide to expand and become Senator or wanting to become Senator? Yeah, so the Washington County District has three Senators and one of them recently stepped down, Anthony Polina. And I have been thinking about making the jump to working at the state level in the state legislature and just knowing that Anthony was stepping down seemed like the right moment, seemed like the right opportunity and especially because I'm really passionate about a lot of topics, one of them being climate action. I've been able to make a lot of progress with the city of Montpelier, but we need bigger change and in order to make bigger change on the issue of climate, I need a different seat. So I'm happy to be putting my name in for the Washington Senate District. Three, two, one. Go ahead. Gun violence. Okay. It's extremely important to deal with gun violence in a way that we've never dealt with it before. We talk about gun violence and people with special needs that are enabled in our near with Senator Rebecca Bilan of Vermont. Let's take a look at this clip of her enabled in our near. Let's take a look at this. And they're in the news as of late all around the world. There's been issues of school shootings. There's been issues of many situations with guns and ghost guns and new things. Can you explain a little bit about, because I know that Governor Scott had passed a gun law, can you explain a little bit about that and then we can go from there? Oh, happy to. And thank you so much for having me and for folks who might be watching. I'm the president pro tem of the Senate here in Montpelier in the state house, but I represent Wyndham County in the southern part of the state. And I mentioned that because the organizer, the founder of one of our best gun safety prevention programs here in Vermont, Gun Sense Vermont, is actually from my home county. Her name is Anne Braden. She no longer has the organization Gun Sense Vermont, but she was really the one after the Sandy Hook massacre, the school, she was originally from Sandy Hook. And also Columbine, too. Exactly. And so she really was instrumental in pushing all of us around the state to think more carefully about gun violence prevention. And so this most recent bill comes after a series of other bills that we've worked on in the last few sessions. It's very important for proper social work services anywhere in the world. Let's take a look at... Recently we've had our nephew, David Wecker, talking about social work in Israel. Let's take a look at this clip. David Wecker, social worker from Israel. Welcome back to Abledon on there, and you were on before. Thanks for having me. Okay. For those that don't know, since you are a social worker in Israel, what is the difference between, in your opinion, or there are differences, obviously, what's the difference of being a social worker in Israel and the United States? Are there any differences within practicum, helping people, being a social worker? I didn't know so much about the system here in the United States, but what I can say about Israel and where I see the difference is like in Israel, it's a welfare society. They're taking care of all the citizens from where they start. They have free health insurance to all the citizens. And then you grow up in a welfare society. Of course, the education is free. What is meant by a welfare society in this case? You have a lot of fright from the time that your birth and the end of your life when you became old and you need some help. The state, they care on all the things that you need. School food. Okay. Tell me, Teddy Wazaza. Okay. It's extremely important for people to have school food and important nutrition when it comes to school nutrition. Let's listen in to this clip from Teddy Wazaza from Central Vermont School Food Organization. Let's take a look at this clip. So explain the missions and goals of your agency and what you do to give children and young adults better nutrition in schools. Absolutely. Hunger Free Vermont is an anti-hunger and anti-poverty organization. So we work to do two main things. We advocate for changes that will be made to federal and state programs. And we provide assistance to individuals, organizations, schools to access federal and state programs and get. So we will help apply for grants. We will help you with technical assistance, with filling out all of the very complicated federal paperwork that schools have to fill out. You said federal paperwork. Yep, federal or state paperwork. I just think the federal stuff is typically more complicated than the state stuff. But we help with all of those things. And I specifically work on the Universal School Meals Campaign, which is our campaign to get a law passed to make sure that every student in every school across Vermont has access to breakfast and lunch every day at no cost to them or their families. By the way, we would like to say a special thank you to Chief Pete of the Montpelier Police Department. We wish him well on his new job in Kansas. Let's take a look at this clip when Chief Pete and Washington County Mental Health. Again, we wish him all the best in his new position in Kansas going there to work at the police department. But let's take a look at this clip in terms of Chief Pete and Washington County Mental Health. Well, first and foremost, thank you very much for the opportunity to be here. I really appreciate it. I am, yeah, I'm new to Montpelier for the most part. I've been here since my family and I have been here for coming on two years. It'll be two years in June. And I was born and raised in the south side of the city of Chicago, went off to the military, joined the Air Force, Aircraft Maintenance, and then I switched over to be a federal agent with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. And then from there, I joined the Chicago Police Department, worked in the Chicago Inspector General's Office, worked as no-year client anti-money laundering at J.P. Morgan Private Bank. And then I became the Chief of Police in Alamogordo, New Mexico and then I started my gig here. Go ahead. I'll do it in a second. Okay. Let's also take a look at this clip from Joann Siegel from the John F. Kennedy Center in the Bronx and Dr. Karen Benook of the Einstein Hospital. They were on a Zoom broadcast talking about a COVID program and dealing with people with special needs in New York and beyond. Let's take a look at this clip. Can you tell us a little bit, well, can you tell us a lot about the grant and why and how it got started and the importance of it? Maybe I'll start with that. Okay. So I'd say a little over a year ago, I looked around and I saw that there was likely a need for vaccine education for people with developmental disabilities. I actually reached out to some of our clinicians and our leadership and particularly in different languages to get information out there. And I think people thought that maybe I was getting a little bit ahead of the curve. The vaccines were just starting to roll out and said hold off. At the same time, I contacted the New York State Developmental Disabilities Planning Council and put forth the idea of a vaccine education project aimed at developing different media initiatives and getting out science-based information. And they agreed that it was a good idea. My turn. Now let's listen in and take a look at Washington County mental health. We've had Gary Gordon on several times in the past and also in recent times talking about crisis training and emergency mental health with Washington County mental health. One of our sponsors enabled them on there. Let's take a look and listen in. Excellent service to all of our clients, to all of our population in Washington County and the three towns in Orange County that we serve. Our mission is to be inclusive to provide these services without prejudice or discrimination to anyone in our county no matter what the situation is. Our doors are always open, you know, and we welcome people to come into our services and we work very diligently to provide those services. We provide a range of services. We have our Developmental Services Division. We have our Children, Youth and Family Services Division. We have our Community Support Program Division and we have our Intensive Care Services Division and we're all out there working tirelessly to provide services to our clientele in all of the appropriate and supportive ways, you know, being sensitive to everyone's situation, wherever they are in their life at the time. I mean, I could go into a lot of buzzwords and things like that but I think the bottom line is that we're here to serve the mental health needs of the population of Washington and Orange County. Back in 2015, Abel Denonair came back to television and started here in the sense of Vermont but I've also been a journalist for 30 years but let's take a look at when the Self-Advocacy Association of Vermont and Max Barrows discussed the Self-Advocacy Association of Vermont on Abel Denonair. Let's listen in and take a look at that clip. A self-advocate. When we define self-advocates, it is somebody who speaks up for themselves for their needs and their wants and their goals in life, a person with a disability in particular. It goes and coincides with the term self-advocacy and what we mean by self-advocacy is it's not a program, it's a movement and it's the kind of movement where we speak up for ourselves and we encourage other individuals with disabilities to speak up and take charge of their lives and take responsibility of themselves and also speak up for others. It is a national statewide and also international movement that has been happening for years and the work we do is based off of that in a human rights perspective. Now let's discuss even though this show is about a half an hour, there have been some very prominent things on some things that have been happening with people with special needs throughout the year and let's look up some prominent things in terms of disability news. In terms of the situation with social security, for anyone in terms of this year, social security for people with special needs, according to disability scoop, will be going up 8.7%. So if you get SSI or SSDI, be prepared for a $170 jump in your social security check. For more information on that, you can go to www.disabilitiescoop.com and also disability scoop is the primary source of news and information besides Abledon on Air for more news and information for people with special needs. So there's education, there's news about autism, health and behavior, so on and so forth. As a matter of fact, according to disability scoop, you're going to be making more visible on the airline. Yes, as a matter of fact for people with special needs and disability scoop.com, let's take a look at some news really quick. Spending on adults with disabilities differs from by race and place, which kind of deals with politics. One state system for ensuring that adults with developmental disabilities get crucial services and are plagued with the stark differences in spending by race, ethnicity, and where people live, advocates say. This is according to an article that was dated November 1, 2022. And then also, according to disability scoop, advocates work to ensure that every vote counts. If you are voting on voting day, which is November 8, you can go, if you're here in Vermont, you can go to City Hall and they can help you vote if you need a larger print ballot. You can ask for help there. But according to disability scoop, people with disabilities can vote easier just by asking for more services. So for more information on that, you can go to www.disabilitiescoop.com and also look up many different things when it comes to voting. This is according to the Baltimore Sun. Every vote counts. There was an article done there. Again, for more information on people with special needs and news and people with special needs, you can go to www.disabilitiescoop.com but just know that everyone here can tune in to Ableton on Air and Vermont's premier program for people with special needs in Vermont and beyond. We would like to extremely say a special thank you to Washington County Mental Health, Remount and Support Services, and many other people in 2022 that have helped, especially this show is an association with Orca Media. We would like to thank Orca Media for helping us throughout the years since 2015. Put on a great show and we thank Orca Media for everything. For more information on Orca Media and Ableton on Air, you can go to www.OrcaMedia.net and also our podcast. We'll be back on Anchor and Spotify this year or even next year. We will be back again with the podcast. We would like to thank everyone for a wonderful 2022 with Ableton on Air. Please be safe. I'm Lauren Seiler. I'm Arlene Seiler. Have a wonderful holidays. Happy Hanukkah. Happy New Year. And we'll see you in 2023. Major sponsors for Ableton on Air include Green Mountain Support Services, empowering people with disabilities to live home in the community. Washington County Mental Health, where hope and support come together. Media sponsors for Ableton on Air include Park Chester Times, Muslim Community Report, www, this is the Bronx.info, Associated Press Media Editors, New York Power Online Newspaper, U.S. Press Corps Domestic and International, Anchor FM and Spotify. Partners for Ableton on Air include Yachad of New York and New England, where everyone belongs, the Orthodox Union, the Division for the Blind and Visually Impaired of Vermont, the Vermont Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired, Center Vermont Habitat for Humanity and Montpelier Sustainable Coalition, Montefiore Medical Center of the Bronx, Rose of Kennedy Center of Bronx, New York, Albert Einstein College of Medicine of the Bronx, Ableton on Air has been seen in the following publications. Park Chester Times, www, this is the Bronx.com, New York Power Online Newspaper, Muslim Community Report, www.h.com and the Montpelier Bridge. Ableton on Air is part of the following organizations, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Boston, New England chapter and the Society of Professional Journalists.