Friday, July 11, 2008

Campaigning for Iraq's Disabled

If you ever wonder whether one person can really change the world, Tiana Tozer has your answer. This Mercy Corps staff member was recently featured on MSNBC's Making a Difference segment.

Using a wheelchair since she was hit by a drunk driver, Tiana's positive outlook on life is inspiring others. Now she is heading to Iraq for a year to give a voice to Iraq's disabled community. According to Mercy Corps, 90 percent of disabled Iraqis live in poverty, despite this Tiana's campaign is showing that they are role models for the rest of Iraqi society on how to live together and overcome adversity.

Since 2003, Mercy Corps has invested in the capacity of people with disabilities by:
  • Supporting and training 33 disability-rights organizations and helping them form a Baghdad-based alliance to lobby the government on disability issues
  • Funding activities such as sewing workshops for deaf women, literacy classes for disabled children, and wheelchair sporting events for youth
  • Building new wheelchair-accessible parks, schools, community centers and sports complexes, and helping dozens of people with disabilities modify their private homes
"They told you that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. What they failed to tell you is that it is best seen with the eyes closed. What you look like isnít important. What is important is who you are inside and the choices you are making in your life." Tiana Tozer: 1992 Paralympic silver and 1996 bronze medalist, women's wheelchair basketball.

Photo Caption: Tiana Tozer on NBC Nightly News MercyCorps>
at

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous5:54 PM, March 31, 2009

    What an amazing woman Tiana Tozer is.. !!!

    ReplyDelete

The Ground Truth Blog is a forum for those who care about the plight of innocent Iraqis. All opinions expressed in this blog are those of the EPIC community, and not necessarily those of the Education for Peace in Iraq Center (EPIC). We embrace the democratic spirit of civil discourse, but reserve the right to remove any content that we find to be unacceptable, including anything that: (1) abuses, harasses, or threatens a person or persons; (2) knowingly falsifies information or defames or misrepresents another person; (3) Violates any obligation of confidentiality; (4) Violates the privacy of any third party; (5) Contains editorial content that has been commissioned and paid for by a third party and/or contains paid advertising links and/or SPAM; (6) infringes upon any copyright, trademark, trade secret or patent of any third party (all quotes and excerpts must be properly attributed to the original author). For details on fair use, see the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Legal Guide for Bloggers).