Jean Judes – Executive Director, Beit Issie Shapiro
Lecture of Jean Judes, Beit Issie Shapiro’s Executive Director, presented at the UN as part of the Civil Society Forum, on promoting partnerships on a local, national and international level, in order to promote social change.

As the Convention on Rights of People with Disabilities was established, six hundred and fifty million people changed status, from “object of charity” to a status of people with rights, who demand their rights while maintaining that “nothing about us – without us”. Prof. Stein engages in a general discussion of the Convention in his lectures. Other points covered in the lecture are related developments around the world, the UN disability conference held in Geneva and how the Convention is applied and monitored in different countries by the Harvard Law School.

Following the International Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities, Prof. Kanter from the Faculty of Law, Syracuse University, USA, states in her lecture, that the existing concept of community life must be abandoned in favor of the understanding that people with disabilities are entitled not only to live in a community, but to also choose how to live in it: at their own residence or in a house with other people.

Stan Goldman’s lecture describes the activities and vision of the Weinberg Foundation, which supports “elective communities”, designed to allow people with disabilities to choose their place and form of residence. The lecture describes examples of the success of this approach in the US and in Israel.