2011年8月14日星期日

Eunice Kennedy Shriver: Tireless Activist for the Mentally Disabled

He says they are often the ones earning the least, and most at risk of losing their jobs in the recession. Also, he says reforms are needed so disabled people do not lose certain health assistance by taking a job.


Currently most federal assistance for long-term care pays for services provided in nursing homes. The proposed law aims to expand community-based services for those who want to receive long-term care at home.

The first Special Olympics took place in Chicago, Illinois. About one thousand athletes competed in nineteen sixty-eight. Today, more than three million train in one hundred fifty countries. The next World Summer Games are in Athens in two thousand eleven.




Eunice Kennedy Shriver was the sister of President John Kennedy and Senator Robert Kennedy. Her surviving brother, Senator Ted Kennedy, is fighting brain cancer and did not attend the funeral.




By Brianna Blake

2009-8-14

More than forty million Americans have some level of disability. An estimated seven and a half million have an intellectual disability.


EUNICE KENNEDY SHRIVER: "Let us not forget that we have miles to go to overturn the prejudice and oppression facing the world's one hundred eighty million citizens with intellectual disabilities."

Vice President Joe Biden was among guests at the funeral. The service included a Special Olympics torch carried by a mother and son, both Special Olympians.






When Eunice Kennedy Shriver began her work, the disabled -- her sister included -- often spent most of their lives in hospitals or other institutions.


This is IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English.








Family members, including daughter Maria Shriver and her husband, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, rear center
Thousands of mourners gathered Friday on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, for the funeral of Eunice Kennedy Shriver. She started the Special Olympics for athletes with mental disabilities. She died Tuesday at the age of eighty-eight.

And that's IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English, written by Brianna Blake. I'm Steve Ember.


Doris Ray is a director of the ENDependence Center of Northern Virginia. She says another important effort is a bill proposed this year in Congress: the Community Choice Act.



Andrew Imparato heads the American Association of People with Disabilities. He says the biggest challenge is jobs -- the disabled have the lowest employment rate of any minority group in the country.







Eunice Kennedy Shriver in 2006
But what she will be remembered for most is her activism that grew out of the struggles of her mentally retarded sister, Rosemary, who died four years ago.

In nineteen eighty-four she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.


In nineteen ninety Congress passed the Americans With Disabilities Act. It requires equal treatment in employment, government services, transportation and public places like hotels.

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