 I just wanted to, really from the bottom of my heart, welcome everybody here, it's a privilege and a privilege, it's an honor, it's a pleasure that we are having this first anniversary of star, I get nervous when the first annual is there, it's an aspiration, it's a hope, we'll have to make sure we have a second one, but then we can call it annual because we've actually done it, mashallah, alhamdulillah, welcome everybody, we're very proud to have you here and to learn for those people that have in their family people with special needs, because some of us know about it, some of us don't, it's good to be exposed so that we can make this much more special needs friendly, just one comment I will make, because I don't pretend to understand the difficulty people go through, my son, one of my sons, alhamdulillah for eight years he could not eat, he was allergic to basically all foods and they were on a special diet, we'd feed him, we'd throw up, we'd feed him, we'd throw up, and I was really concerned that he would live, because the doctors had put the tube in and that was like, I'm not gonna put the tube in, put the tube in for the rest of your life, I'm not gonna put the tube in for the rest of your life, and I remember it was 10 hours a day just to get the calories in the body, with my wife, I didn't do any of my work, to put the work in, alhamdulillah he's past that, he loves food, he needs pretty much everything, and that's just a taste, I think it was but also it's a taste of the joy and the love that exists, the bond, the tight bond that exists there, alhamdulillah you know this is truly a dream come true, just to be a part of a promo about muhsin after all these years of planning and getting it together, and you know just envisioning subhanallah what it would be like for the muslim community to have an effort, an initiative that goes out there and remosks you know an often forgotten group of unmasked individuals and unmasked families in fact that have people in their that have you know children that have people in their families that have these special needs and that have these disabilities assalamu alaikum my name is Arshay Ali Khan and today I'm here to talk to you a little bit about my brother I want to take this time to talk to you about my daughter Serena who is my she's a six and a half now and she's a bright loving kind fun child who has this great toothless smile right now that she lost her tooth and she also has cerebral palsy assalamu alaikum my name is Feryal Tahir and I'm 15 years old and I have a sister named Meharine and she's great at basketball she's a wiz at the computers she loves to eat and she has autism spectrum disorder when I was 19 years old my brother was diagnosed with a mental illness an invisible disability at the time there was no community support or religious outlets that we could turn to for help so instead of being supported we felt alienated and shamed there are so many families that are affected by this in our community and we just don't see them subhanallah because they're buried away while we're enjoying our khutbahs and we're enjoying our halakas and we're enjoying all the great activities in the masjid these families have been completely barred from the masjid and when they set foot in the masjid it's the most uncomfortable feeling in the world so for many families not we're not just talking about those that have needs and disabilities many families the masjid has become a place to resent because when they walk in there all they get are the dirty looks all they get are the you know go home sentiments rather than this is your home because the masjid is the home of every believer as the prophet's life and i'm set we just need a little extra help we need a little extra support we need a little understanding but inshallah we can get there there's no reason not to it's not asking for a lot it's just asking for a little bit of a little bit of acceptance a little bit of sensitivity and i think an organization like mosin is the perfect vehicle to do that inshallah i pray for the success of mosin because had there been an organization that was around for us to connect to that provided awareness acceptance and guidance perhaps my brother wouldn't have been left alone perhaps my mom wouldn't have put herself to bed crying day in and day out perhaps families like ours would have had a place to go and people to support them through it i what helps me get through everything when we're going through a struggle with marine is that thinking that marine is an angel and if we hold on to a sinless angel like marine inshallah she will like help us on the day of judgment and she will take us to jannah inshallah and i i would like other people to feel the same way inshallah through this through mohsin we can begin to show ihsan to them and hopefully we can make the masjid more comfortable for them and they can make our day of judgment more comfortable for us by testifying on our behalf that we truly did ease the way for them if you're if you're anybody in your family don't have somebody that you know the disability it might be hard for you to understand what we may be going through but there's so much you can do to help you can spread awareness and just being kind to somebody with a disability or if somebody a family with a disability and be kind to them and welcoming to them that'll make them feel really happy also you can volunteer to watch them while the family gets involved in masjid activities i have been blessed and honored to develop and work for the umma center a non-profit dedicated to empowering the lives of the underserved the alienated the disenfranchised the poor we provide education empowerment programs and basic need programs and with every person that i have fed educated clothed and served i pray deep down that there is someone out there doing the same for my brother. Salaam alaikum and welcome to MCC's first annual special needs at thar i'm zarfate the woman behind all the blue wells you probably have been getting and i'm the organizer of this event and i just wanted to thank each and every one of you for taking the time and effort to come out to this event i truly hope that this is the beginning of a new wave of programs for the special needs community because i believe it's so important that the muslim community is a place of inclusivity and a place where there's no disparities between anybody and at this point i'd really like to introduce our three speakers for expecting one more but we're just gonna get started um we have Abdullah Mojivevi the far left um our far right for you guys who works in recreational and psychological therapy of Shahi a proud parent of an autistic teenager and a credentialed teacher and Haid al-Huqliza a diversity and equity counts specialists at the regional center of east bay at this point i'm going to let them introduce themselves and what they've done in relations to the special needs community thank you zara and thank you um so much um mcc um for having this so um yeah i'm a proud parent of a young muslim adult uh she's 19 now um her name's annam with high functioning autism uh she um right now i am a credentialed teacher and co-founder of annay tutors uh in-person or online tutoring company based in long creek in danville um and i wanted to talk about um my journey and particularly um to try to help um people i understand welcome all of you um who are struggling um with a disability in your family um so my family was actually honored by easter seals um in 2015 um and featured as one of the stories of hope of because of my daughter's wonderful progress with ava therapy which is applied behavioral analysis therapy um and my daughter since then has graduated from high school and with a very hard earned diploma and attends college um so see she actually wanted me to um share her story um you know since she's 19 and everything i have to ask for permission for everything so she's she's very happy to um help out and share her story to help um families with special needs and um if we can play a two minute video about um her story about five thirty five minutes more families more services that we can provide and do it in a very efficient way before i take the easter seals i was very shy and then ali came in and told me about how i'd open up and make more friends i already had a typical child so once she came along I knew that something was wrong and took her to many doctors and not everybody knows about autism and it's pretty difficult and frustrating to not be able to have a label or it even has a for group to understand what's going on but once we did at the age of 11 she was able to get a therapy through easter seals and help her with her communication skills as she so very badly needed her communicated problems were becoming isolating when she transitioned from middle school to high school easter seals was there I think easter seals has really helped her integrate with the group itself whatever group it might be and really blossom the costume was amazing I felt a little nervous at first that and I actually nailed it all my friends were around me and I felt fine and okay that's all doctors easter seals had helped us grow as a family from being a full-time mom I'm able to actually return back to considering a career and going back to school instead of always being worried about my daughter I know that she'll be okay that's about the clip about us there's if you want to take down that the description there you can watch the whole clip it's just about what helped us would help our family was a therapy that may or may not help your family depending on your individual situation but that definitely did help my family and I think a community like this and just having MCC open doors as I talked about that video that it's hard to find support so I'm very very honored to be here and thank you and I work for the regional center of the East Bay can you raise your hand if you know what the regional center of the East Bay is okay 200 only um so what I'm gonna say is that um before 70s 1974 perhaps who cares around that time before that when a person was born with a disability or was diagnosed with a disability whether it was autism I don't think there were many diagnosed with autism at the time but several policy of other disabilities they would be taken to institutions and the regional center they showed us some videos that pretty much illustrate the conditions of those individuals they were treated like cattle like animals like they did not have humanity and themselves that's how it was before so in the 70s um the that situation changed and changed with legislation that is called the Lanterman Act Mr. Frank Lanterman was a legislator and he introduced legislation to uh determine that every person living in California who has a developmental disability has the right by law of any service that will make their lives as normal as possible so in order to implement that legislation and it doesn't matter what the the um legal situation of that family or that person is it doesn't matter anything as long as they reside as long as they live in California by law they have the title to receive services so then in order to implement the the law the regional center system was also implemented as part of the um of the vehicle to make sure that the law would be implemented everywhere so currently there are 21 regional centers in California so that the entire state is covered by one regional center or another the one that I work for covers two counties Alamira and Contra Costa there's another one in San Jose that would be um whatever regional center it is on all guys so I forget things um it's called San Andreas Regional Center we have one in San Francisco it's called Golden Gate Regional Center we have one in Napa it's called North Bay Regional Center so that is one one part of what the regional center is so once a person is enrolled in our system then that person is assigned a case manager a social worker who would work with that family to make sure that all the services that this child or this person needs are in fact put in place um so that that person can have as normal life as possible so there's a lot of information that I can share with you but mainly what I'm going to say is that that throughout the years there has been a constant in terms of um the number of individuals who are not benefiting from the regional center and for the most part uh individuals or families whose primary language is not English tend to be those that suffer or are impacted by the disparities in the services provided by regional center and sometimes people do not use the services for a number of reasons so I think when when we have events like this and I want to thank Zara and the center and thank you all beautiful community for embracing for receiving us because this is information that we want to share with you um on an ongoing basis so um what I did many years ago was noticing that the many families who are Spanish speakers my primary language is Spanish I am Colombian by birth um so knowing that many families were not benefiting from regional center services then some parents some professionals and myself we got together and we created an organization called Congreso Familia and that is a conference just as um the gentleman said earlier an annual conference we were also nervous at the beginning because it's supposed to be an annual conference we started with 200 something people attending the first event at Chaco college and today we have more than a thousand people attending every year this year the conference is going to be on the 4th of August if anyone of you want to visit and go and see lots of families having fun enjoying food music but also learning through more than 45 workshops and different topics then and then you're welcome to to to visit us so what I think is that this is a perfect approach for the work that I do my job is to make sure that nobody's left behind especially in communities that are impacted by the disparities and I think this is exactly what we want to see in every community um in every group that has been impacted um so I have um I have some flyers with uh the services that that's regional center provides and you know at the end you can take one of them and any inform any if you need additional information or if you need to um uh deliver a message to the regional center if you're not being served um as you deserve then you can talk to Zara and maybe through her we can get your information so that we can follow up and make sure that that that you are receiving again for me my point of view is really that this is by law this is not because we're good people or anything that obviously we're good people too but this is mandated and you have the right to those services that the law requires that be provided to you thank you but this is a beautiful panel and they have such a fantastic message because this is a real life story as well as Rashida and my friend here so I'm going to pass it on to them I'm not submitted with a specialty uh disability I actually had a spinal cord injury in 2010 October 22nd I suffered a motorcycle accident fracturing my spinal cord T-4-5-6-7-8 for all you anatomy lovers um in doing so I'm basically paralyzed from chest down and so after three years of my disability I discovered a center called Board Bay Area Outreach and Recreational Program they offer adaptive sports for people with physical and mental disabilities I'll talk more about that about that later on but currently I do live a life as with a manual wheelchair and I do have the ability to drive a motor vehicle with electric with hand control assist but I can talk more on that later I first want to thank Zara for these special events and I want to thank everybody who worked directly and indirectly to organize such an event actually this is the first event that's happening in our Muslim community for special needs children and we don't want it to be the last we want more of it uh so um today I'm here to introduce my organization Family Resource Navigators and the Family Resource Navigator it has been there since 1992 and it was the project of Banana Inc so recently on 2017 we became independent as a non-profit organization and we are serving all Alameda County we work directly with families of children with special need I mean with social emotional concern health care need a speech delay or any kind of concern so we are kind of like our organization is a parent led and parent staffed and we provide services for we do more likely connectivity to services and we have we're a multi-language program and service um and we uh we kind of like service families culturally responsive by by and for diverse family so um we have 12 languages we speak English Spanish Cantonese Mandarin Farsi Bari Arabic French Tamil we speak Hindi Chinese and Moms so we try to provide services in the native speaking language for the family so we have a variety of programs that I will cover later on I guess this is just a quick introduction and I want to hold a lot but I will go through the programs and I will explain exactly what we do and you may find this point I want to open up most of the questions of this panel to the audience so that you can all ask your questions to our lovely speakers today so at this point you can just raise your hands and call on you there has to go policy to an extent where he's spastic quadriplegic and I was interested and curious about the programs um the more and more social events that you guys kind of provide because me taking care of him and uh he he stays at home most of the times we barely go out sometimes we go for a walk but we want kind of social events is there any programs that you guys have or anything like that he he does the work too like he does power soccer so if anything else you did spoke about the uh goalball but I'm certain you know about the youth will jump out of the team and the adaptive cycling center correct so uh as you know we're located in berkeley uh there are there is the headquarters where you're probably familiar with ashby and robert's campus where our centers located but our sports centers are actually located throughout berkeley for the cycling center we're actually located by by the aquatic park are you familiar with that area so saturday mornings from nine to twelve we have youth rides it's usually coordinated for uh for people to come together with multiple disabilities or one disability and have a youth ride together so we encourage families to come along to make it a family event with youth basketball there's also on saturday morning so you may have to choose which sports he would like to choose cycling is more of a family oriented sport where basketball is more team oriented so depending on his abilities he can choose which he will find more is there anything where because he's wheelchair bound he has no control with his body like he has limited control but thank you he has very limited control with his body is there anything where it's like it is it's uh like you know kind of his wheelchair is also how do i say he uses the site he's using his hands so is there anything where like is it absolutely absolutely for the cycling i've been working there for three years so i'm quite uh aware of what we have so we have different adaptive cycles where we can accommodate for him and include you with uh the ride so in other words there can be two people in one bicycle we do have measures where we can secure his legs and arms to the bike that way uh the spasticity does not make his limbs uh at risk of being injured at the same time we do encourage uh youtube as a as the rider with him to be observing what's going on um we do sometimes we do encourage all of families to come along so that way he can feel welcomed and you can feel welcome so we can accommodate all you guys with uh cycles what's the name of the place again uh it's adaptive uh adaptive cycling uh you can find our website uh but uh it's looking at 80 boulevard and the aquatic park board adaptive cycling center so my older brother he's uh has intellectual disability and he's a recent immigrant and i was just wondering what i need to do to get him to register with either regional center or whatever uh needs help yeah um so any person can be referred to regional center if you think that someone um would qualify for services at the regional center you can make that referral and if normally um for someone to be accepted at the regional center but its ability had to start before the age of 18 so when the child is um obviously we encourage and we all encourage um to start services as early as possible because sometimes even if there is early intervention and as early as you know starting at zero um then some children may actually um get the services and and get if there was something that could be rectifying the first years and rashita is especially than that um so then they can uh receive the service and maybe never um belong uh be registered as regional center clients now if the person was born in another country then there would be some process to um collect information that would prove that this person was um had the disability before the age of 18 probably medical records probably testimonials for the family i am not in charge of that but yes uh that person can benefit from the regional center if you have something to say about that okay thank you so much so um yeah there is no restriction whether the person is documented or non documented so anybody could be referred to the regional center they are really good in providing services and anybody can do referral you can go through an organization like ours have some card here for everybody and this is family resource navigators and you can either go through it you can do self-refer and uh there are five criteria to be eligible for the regional center one of them is intellectual disability so uh yes you um you can do the referral as soon as possible uh you mentioned the ages and he's uh 60 60 60 okay i just wonder what kind of services we can get yeah so probably independent living yeah so probably independent independent living so he can be uh independent on probably uh also he may want to look at in-home support services so somebody can be around help him do his basic uh basic need everything i need and probably SSI stuff like that that's like part of what we do as a parent is just to uh help family connect to services starting from special education to um to medical our insurance to financial services that are available to children or adults or whatever it is we recently uh got some grants to help we used to work only 0 to 5 but we extended that to recently to the grant we received from the regional center of the east bay and from BDS now they are finding us to work under the age of 21 and we have mainly that they are few population like the arabic speaking population farce dary spanish hindi those are like five population that can help until the age of 21 but if there is any health care significant health care need there is other service called ccs which is such california children's services so that's also they can cover like some services and they can get some family navigation as well as alam aleykum i have two boys with special needs and my question is regarding conservatorship and power of attorney because one is going to be turning 18 next year and the other one is going to turn 18 in four years so the one with 18 i'm kind of worried because i know it's the lengthy process to do all the court paperwork for it so i wanted to know what's the most economical way to go about it if you guys have any information on it because i have talked to a couple of lawyers about it and it's a very costly procedure so if you guys can shed some light on that for your question thank you i'll try okay so um i guess your party speak first speaker so i want you to i want to give you a card of one of my colleagues she can help you through that and she is working with farce speaking population i brought her cards here so um um please give us a call it's like very hard for me to explain every step here but you're definitely going to get a family navigation that work one-on-one with you okay so um my question is have you worked with disability rights california yeah disability rights california provides um services at no cost so they have lawyers and that's what they do is to to provide assistance legal assistance to clients on the regional center and sometimes um even um to fight the regional center but the regional center is not doing our job properly then disability rights california intervenes with their lawyers and their legal um uh personnel to support families so i can give you later i can give you talk to sarah i can send names of individuals that we work with um and can do some research in terms of um uh what would be the i don't think there's any cost associated with that from from lawyers from disability rights california they're also part of the system and they are there to support you to support sound like everybody my name is afton madudy um i actually represent mca's bamburak i also wanted to ask the board as well if i could shed some light uh we also so because we're also located in the pleasant area we also have a Santa claire area mca if people are aware of that near san jose we actually have a program called bamburak for the youth seven to thirteen and we actually provide recreational activities so if they are uh potentially you know if they want to still integrate themselves to uh kids who are also able um we can we offer that um we also want to provide a way to maybe we can do a partnership for people who don't have to come all the way to hayward or they can come to san jose um we also want to integrate an activity program so we have rock climbing we have canoeing we have basketball we have football we have basketball everything um we also want to integrate maybe we can ask the the parents here we want to integrate it kind of like a video game kind of uh place where kids can also learn how to use a computer coding microsoft spreadsheet uh you can be able to play video games if that's up to the parents um and i wanted to ask the board if this is okay to integrate uh this program with you guys we're asking the board of mtc something we definitely take into consideration we are looking for better ways to conserve this population so sarah and i will talk to you afterwards inshallah other questions let's go down the line and hear from each of you on how you individually believe that the rest of the community can what they can do to kind of be more inclusive of the special needs community and the kind of programs and implementations we need especially for the mosque here to kind of make it more friendly to this community personally do believe event like this outreach to the community and integration can really help and bring awareness we uh we should do more of this actually we should plan eat events plan other events in which we spray the word and spray the resources available for them to make it easy for the family as well as receiving services for the kids because parenting and child with special needs is really really hard physically and emotionally can be stressful and this family not only that they need to seek services for to help their kids did themselves need support and there are a lot of support in the community just need to know um well i have um a lot of suggestions um it depends um i will tell you what but health for our family um one was uh number one is to allow others to help um you know and let your like say if you have extended family like i for example i wanted my daughter to read the Quran um and she already had a speech delay and she's academically she had a language disability so um that was tough but um i was like you know overwhelmed um with the academics um so i i kind of resourced that out to my mom she was here today and um she would she would call her again and again and again to alhamdulillah until she finished the whole program i also had private tutors um for her i did academically because a special um ed program that she was in for most of her life it was more from like a contained classroom so they they were great for her to maintain her self-esteem um that's key because you don't want them to hate learning but the challenges to challenge the child you know to kind of uh not really to the break up frustration but you know just to challenge them as as much as we can um i would do that or hire private tutors to do that um and so the that's kind of how i got her to kind of get out of special ed after the aviate therapy kind of relaxed her anxiety her social anxiety then alhamdulillah i think her brain kind of improved she was able to then um take in more academics and then as therapy for aviate stopped after school we had more time also for tutoring etc so then she was able to switch from certificate track to then grad track and then able to um um get a diploma so um i also did like islamic school i did girl scouts um at srbic um what else um there's um things that i wish that were there when she was growing up with something like the halil center which they have now we didn't have that back then when she was growing up of this they do have halil center they have take appointments counseling points here i wish we had that um when she was growing up but you guys are lucky that it is here now i would encourage you to take advantage of that that's like um more islamic and spiritual place counseling so you don't feel that your that your values aren't being compromised if you go to therapy or something you know it's going to be you know they're not going to tell you well you know you're an adult so just get out of the house and things like that it's going to be as you know needed for your family situation including your spiritual aspect too um also look at the strengths of your child don't just look at the negative stuff if you just look at the negative stuff you're always going to be um kind of exhibiting also negative feedback to your kid so be positive and try to look at something positive that your child can do um are they a good artist are they good my daughter was musical for example so i always made sure and we saw that video clip that she was i knew that she was musical she could do music at a pace that everyone else could normally do music so um she was in the orchestra and i encouraged that part and then she told me uh when she was growing up like she was like in fourth grade at that time that's when her music class started and she said mom i like that music class because it makes me feel normal so she understood the difference between special ed and and then the general and where music class was so it's and again that helps her self-esteem so let's not to define her and um i didn't tell her their her label either that's a judgment call on you on your part when you want to tell your child what what if it helps them or if it doesn't help them you would be the best judge in that again counseling things like that like would also help either from your medical insurance that's fine or from the hulu center um um let's see what else the care center there's a care's parent network um and martin is um i think they also have other branches as well they're pretty good as well to help organize you know iEP paperwork which can stack up and medical group or and all these other things that you need to be organized you need to be the best advocate for your child how to do that you need to first get your stuff together get your papers together and there are organizations like the care parent network who will help you so let's see what else i mean i also took her to kruman i also did active reading clinic um because she was late in reading so um you know to try to help her read um they use like a program that was developed by someone with dyslexia but i can't say dyslexia dyslexia and so she she actually organized that program and used more sound movements to um help a child read instead of just how they do it in school which is very different um you know it's mainly just auditory and visual so using like motions um would be a different um normal pathway that helped my child it might help yours to help read so the brain is amazing so you never know what might help your child um you know get past um whatever um you know hurdle that they need and a child advocate i did hire a child advocate at some point for ips care parent network and regional center also have at times being a part of the ips team um sometimes during ips means individual and it's educational plan how many people know what ips are raise your hand okay so you're on board and you know you might feel outnumbered and that ips you be boardroom so you want to if you want to have other people on your side sometimes regional center would be happy to they used to come out at least and be a part of um um the ip meetings and you know for proper representation of um you know and i mean always work as a team don't think people like parents and teachers like i've been on both sides of the table now being an educator myself i'm a california credential teacher so i've been on the side where um you know there's parents and families on the other side and i'm and the teacher telling them you know this is as sensitively as possible you know that what your child needs to learn or what they're working on what their strengths and weaknesses are so um um yeah what else so yeah there's a lot out there so i'll be happy to talk with you individually as well okay i just need a couple of hours to say what i'm gonna say so let me see um uh i think um reflecting a little bit about how it was in my own country when i was growing up and um when a child there was a child with special needs uh there were terrible names for them and people felt ashamed of those children so there is shame there is stigma associated with having a child and i think one of the things that we all can do together is to fight those things internally and also in the larger community so um um i am extremely happy to see that this center is taking these steps to create the conditions for families with special needs to to feel good about themselves about their children to feel proud of them to celebrate them so i would say that any effort that is done to break the isolation break the isolation when you have a child with special needs and you feel isolated that people don't care about you people don't know about your struggles people judge you you know they or they have their own views of things then that as opposed to having a community that embraces these families that this is not maybe there's an annual event but actually um um we're almost done that that um it's an annual event but i would say uh zara to continue to have this an ongoing conversation and also providing ongoing support you know i know that that's already happening i'm not um drawing any conclusion but my guess is that this is the product of an attitude from this center which is there to be inclusive to be understanding merciful and compassionate and really be with people where they are so i would say um any effort is always appreciated especially for those families who feel that that they might be uh stigmatized because they have a child or because there is a person with special needs all right on the crv likes on outside park all right okay so uh how i think the community can benefit is first of all like to say all of us are temporary able so eventually we will become disabled my issue is a mobility issue so i like to have a list here so i'm going to begin with how the community can benefit is the exposure can educate the people around us simply by being physically present many of our brother and sister do not know about disabilities and mostly are willing to learn in health this is an opportunity for us taking accountability of what we know and sharing to the community first of all you may notice that during times of Ramadan and eat or especially events people do like to park in the handicap spots if they're in a rush and these parking spots are there for a reason so if an unauthorized vehicle is there somebody just do your part just just write a note on the letter and if it needs be you can call the authority it's don't be ashamed for what is out there for you another thing is that a lot of people love to use the handicap stalls now i understand that spacious and comfortable but there's a reason why it's spacious and comfortable i use a wheelchair a lot of people use electric wheelchairs and we can't fit into the normal stalls and so i don't mind sharing my disability so i don't have water about control so if i'm waiting somebody to exit the stall i just smile when the person exits because they don't know but i had to let them know hey because of you i wet my pants because of you my bowels came out so i mean i have no shame so this is something that we all need to be aware of now if you see somebody in line with who has a disability or in the wheelchair allow them to take the front of the line and let them use the handicap stall another thing is that some people like to park where they sometimes fans allow to use the lift and there are special strips on the white strips on the ground people like to park there sometimes and if you do block that area the person who has a lift or myself who has a wide door i can get out with making my wheelchair outside so like i have to repark the car and make my trip to the moss much longer another thing that everyone loves to do is to live they love to leave the shoes out in front of the entrances including the bathroom entrances such as the slippers now for somebody like myself who has the ability to go over the slippers i have no issue but somebody with a manual chair that can cause some sort of obstacles now in general that's a fire hazard or that's a that's a danger zone so somebody if there's an earthquake or something going on and people are trying to rush out of the building people can trip so this is a serious issue so if it's not your shoes and if it is your shoes just pick them up and move it to the where it needs to be another thing i like to talk about is just again exposure just being here present um and maybe so that some family members or people in our community are uncomfortable with the types of disabilities that are out there whatever the reason they have but us not participating in functions because of the lack of love received from the community community or lack of accommodation due to the infrastructure we will make the it will make the outing for us more difficult but just one of our this is just one of our many struggles particularly our social struggles so in the Quran chapter 49 verse 13 there's a verse that i love to reflect on oh mankind indeed we have created you from male and female and and made you people and tribes that you may know one another so we're all created differently so i like for you guys to just reflect on that again our exposure can educate and take steps to create changes in our community and it's our u.s. citizens rights so there's an issue you can definitely escalate that i wasn't talking about my company but i already spoke more about that so if you even have more interest in what we do i would say that how the community can benefit is create gatherings or outings in the mosque or outside the mosque by keeping community gatherings we can benefit from unity from my experience working at board i have witnessed how a community can come together and grow from what was lacking to providing resources for the disabled community the adaptive cycling center has grown as an outreach center where riders can become members and use equipment when they visit so here at the mosque now i'm not suggesting that we have some sort of like athletic program but we can gain through something from having all of us come together members who have a place in the community during so i mean the mosque is usually open mostly so people who just come together this can be a place of belonging so if you see somebody out there who has a disability or see a parent who's struggling no a smile does go a long way and Islam alaykum of course means peace so if you guys know that understanding the true meaning of that live up to it and i like to say that my program also provides a financial assistance with adaptive sports or adaptive equipments now i know here in the baria a lot of us are really well in having a lot of money so if there aren't people out there who want to help families with disabilities there are ways they can help out a lot uh sports equipments my personal buy cost me 7500 dollars um and so it goes a long way if you go out helping financially or spiritually or just physically should be to just go more into depth and a depth on how we um the rest of the community and how we can all work together to kind of eliminate the stereotypes that are typically associated with the special needs community or people with disabilities eliminating stereotypes okay um i think brother Abdullah was i think said volumes about that about this how smile goes along with i would agree with that um but also there's um it's this is a very difficult question because um you have to really look inside of you to see um what your value systems are and um you know here i'm kind of preaching to the choir i mean you guys have special needs that's where you're here but um you know i think it's great that that mcc is opening the doors to the first community iconer uh you were very specific as an organization to say this is specifically for special needs uh families and i think um to make it kind of exclusive it gives more of a safe creating a safe space for um you know families with special needs to come out and get help or um you know just have some opportunity for socialization um because you know you all my experience has been that um um you know it no matter a lot of it is that if you have a special child a special need it just it it doesn't matter what religion you are what race you are it doesn't matter um it it binds you together as a family especially when you have special needs in your family so um um yeah um that's that's it for us i just have a couple of hours to use of your time now to say something about that but i would say that that um one of the evils in every community is ignorance and i think when we're ignorant about something then we just make up stories we create our own interpretation of what's going on we reinforce stereotypes and the stigma and so on and so forth so i would say that um the opposite of ignorance is obviously education so i would say take every opportunity to educate there are times when we can talk about autism what is autism people don't know about autism what are the manifestations of autism you know when you see a child that is behaving a certain way don't judge the parents you know that that's common i hear that often from parents a child is um is moving around or making some noises and they just start looking at the parent you're a bad parent right people don't know in the end is people are ignorant they don't know what's going on so um as i have suggested earlier this ongoing effort can include education and i think um um you know events like this having other times during the year that conversation goes on and utilizing resources that you have like family resource navigators is a fantastic resource that you have you can contact them and say you know come here talk to us about this or that integrate these resources that already exist in the community to to keep the education going on and also she mentioned kept her network in uh in contra costa we partnered with them they're fantastic because they are out there in the community doing the work with the families so um education is i think is critical to minimize the stereotypes to break the stereotypes i'd like to say it is what it is so take honor take own from what take ownership of what's going on and i love the idea of just exposure showing up be present let people see what's going on if there is a disadvantage there's no shame involved i mean a lot a lot of family members are part of the same thing whether it be visible or invisible we all have a struggle and then we are part of this umma so let's not forget that it took me so long to do the question so i got spurs but yeah what i'm wanting to say reducing storytell is very very complicated and difficult there is some implicit service arm and explicit service arm so what we can do to help is like uh fight ignorance and we cannot know everything about every single diagnosis it's super hard to uh really understand because we may be familiarized with one diagnosis but not the other but what i i will suggest is just be human be nice be considerate and sensitive to the other person that we all human we all although we look normal we all have deficit and we all have needs they may be not showing but we all have needs so just be nice and prompt everybody to be nice to others we're approaching it now so we're going to close off the end of this panel of speakers thank you so much for all coming to this portion of the event um we now all enter the banquet hall over there for if daddy prayer and then dinner um but please don't let these kind of conversations and if you want to talk to any of the speakers individually you can do so during dinner as well as this is an opportunity for all of you to meet each other because this is a community in itself and we want everyone to know each other and have that kind of support system and please also come up to me because i'm open to any kind of suggestions on what kind of programs we should implement at the mosque here for the future because that's definitely um something we need to do and keep as an ongoing thing but thank you all