The Advocate
ALAN REICH 52 championsrights of the disabled.
"Close the gaps between people with and without disabilities—in education, cultural practices, socially, in religious worship...all aspects of lifethat's what we set out to do," says Reich.
This was not Reich's original plan. After graduating from Dartmouth and earning his M.B.A. from Harvard,
Reich worked for Polaroid. However, after a diving accident in 1962 left him a quadriplegic, he became an advocate for the disabled. In 1982 Reich founded the National Organization on Disability (NOD), a Washington D.C.-based national group that works "to change attitudes," he says, among such groups as the media and employers and through state and federal legislation.
Still president of NOD, the McLean, Virginia, resident is also reaching beyond the United States, targeting the 600 million disabled people worldwide. His first accomplishment was working with the United Nations to declare 1981 the Year of Disabled Persons.Reich then went on to create the Bimillenium Foundation, which worked with UN member countries to set goals for the improvement of the lives of their disabled citizens by 2000. This became the World Committee on the Disabled that Reich currently chairs. The committee developed the $50,000 Franklin Delano Roosevelt International Disability Award—given annually to the country showing the most progress—on the 50-year anniversary of the creation of the UN.
Reich has also served as the chair of the Paralysis Cure Research Foundation and presided over the National Paraplegia Foundation. In 2003 he was honored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for his dedication to the Americans with Disabilities Act and President Bush's New Freedom Initiative.
The greatest challenge? "Fundraising while carrying out the programs," he says. "I've learned that some things just take time." But Reich sees the hard work paying off. "Most rewarding has been the progress; people with disabilities taking part in life's activities fully and contributing to society."
