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BY YEAR : 2007 | 2008 | 2009

• 12/08/2008
  Ability Beyond Disability meets challenges head on
• 10/26/2008
  Sodexo Honored by Ability Beyond Disability
• 10/25/2008
  Elaine Cox named Philanthropist of the Year by Ability Beyond Disability
• 10/24/2008
  Pepsi Bottling Group honored by Ability Beyond Disability
• 10/21/2008
  Changing Lives for 55 Years
• 10/20/2008
  Disability Mentoring Day a huge success!
• 10/17/2008
  2nd Annual Career Development Consumer & Employer Breakfast
• 10/01/2008
  Fall Fund Fest has arrived!
• 09/30/2008
  Local businesses help pave the way for students with disabilities
• NEXT

A path to acceptance and understanding

Tom Fanning celebrates 35yr anniversary

DANBURY -- For more than three decades, Tom Fanning has dedicated his life to helping those with disabilities become active members of society.

As the chief executive officer of Ability Beyond Disability, Fanning has centered the organization around supporting clients' abilities, rather than focusing on weaknesses.

"Every human being has limitations and every human being has strengths," said Fanning. "Whether they have a disability or not, everyone wants a safe place to live, to go to school and to hold down a job. Everyone wants that. The inclusion of people with disabilities is very much a civil right."

When Fanning started with the organization 35 years ago, it served several dozen clients with disabilities, operated one group home as well as a sheltered workshop, a segregated area where people with disabilities would work on production projects or mailings for area companies.

Today the organization provides services for nearly 1,500 clients annually, has more than 70 residential locations in either group homes or individual living residences, and places those with disabilities at companies throughout the region.

"We were one of the first organizations in the country to shut down our sheltered workshop and find our clients work in the community," Fanning said. "As a result, our clients have become earners and contribute to society."

In his early years with the organization, Fanning said, there wasn't the level of understanding and acceptance in society about people with disabilities.

"Until 1976, kids with disabilities didn't even have the right to a public education," he said.

Bill Wallace, 23, one of the many clients Ability Beyond Disability has placed at local businesses, said he would love it if someone could invent a time machine to tell people in the past about how to treat those with disabilities.

"They could explain how everyone should be accepted for who they are," said Wallace, a city resident with high-functioning autism who works in the mail room at Praxair.

"There is still a lot of work to be done," he said. "People like me have to share our experience with others."

Within the past year, the organization founded Growing Possibilities, which provides job training and opportunities in agriculture through a rose farm in Guilford -- one of the few left in New England.

Not only does the farm provide a career path for those with autism and other disabilities, it also helps fill the need for agricultural workers in the state.

And that's just the beginning.

Fanning said organizations throughout the country have contacted them about replicating the model.

"We are trying to be an organization that's innovative and creative and not reactive," Fanning said. "Our approach is to understand the realities, and if there are obstacles, figure out a way to overcome them."

Fanning said there are still many challenges on the horizon -- and he is leading the organization toward a path of meeting those challenges head on.

New populations of those with disabilities are growing and their needs are evolving. Several years ago one out of every 150 births in the United States resulted in someone on the autistic spectrum. Today that number has grown to one in 91 births, Fanning said.

As services improve, so does the lifespan of those with disabilities, creating additional services that may be needed.

"People with Down syndrome are now living into their 60s and 70s and are developing medical problems a lot earlier than the rest of us," said Dr. Harvey Kramer, a local cardiologist and chairman of Ability Beyond Disability's board of directors.

As a result, he said, the organization is looking for ways they can help support older residents with disabilities within their own home, instead of being placed within the system.

He said Ability Beyond Disability is also developing a plan to double the amount of clients they serve within the next five years.

"It will take a tremendous amount of fundraising and leadership," Kramer said. "And much of this wouldn't have been possible without Tom. He's the heart and soul of this organization. He's what makes it tick. He lets his actions do his talking for him. Anyone who knows Tom has a great respect for him."

So what exactly makes someone dedicate 35 years of their life to helping others? "I guess I'm just a child of the '60s," Fanning said. "I believe firmly that people do belong in the community. When I first got involved with the organization they weren't. We've made tremendous progress, but we still have a long way to go."

View the story on the News Times website

Posted By: Dirk Perrefort, Danbury News Times