Translator: Clara Sanchez Garcia Reviewer: Maria Pericleous
I want you to think about the typical American workweek.
You've got 40 hours a week, nine to five, five days a week.
That’s what we’ve decided as a society
to be the best way to maximize our resources.
Now, imagine if one a day week,
you and the rest of your co-workers are replaced by people
with no previous experience in your field.
What would happen? What would happen to your business?
Your profits would go down, productivity would decrease
and you’d be at risk of losing your business.
You might ask yourself, who would allow this to happen?
Who would allow 20% of its resources to not be fully utilized?.
That’s precisely what’s happening right now in our country
with our disabled population.
It’s because one in five Americans today live with a disability
making it the largest minority group in the whole country.
But they’re not receiving the same opportunities
and acceptance that everyone else does.
The proof is in the pudding.
If you’re a high-school disabled student, you’re twice as likely not to graduate.
If you’re lucky enough to go on to college,
you are half as likely to graduate from college.
People who are disabled are four times more likely to not have a job.
What this boils down to is a society’s view on disabled people.
Really, there’s a stigma around disability
and it boils down to the general public being uncomfortable
around people with disabilities.
You see this every day
when the wheelchair user is going down the street
and people are blatantly staring at him,
or people talk to me like
I’m a five-year-old because I have a cane in my hand.
These are common everyday occurrences for people with disabilities.
You wouldn’t treat anybody else that way, but again, these are common occurrences.
Like many people with a disability,
finding acceptance for me growing up was nearly impossible.
I was born with the rare retinal disease called Stargardt.
I’ve been legally blind since birth.
Being a blind kid in a visual world is tough enough,
but things were made even worse when I started going to school.
From the second I walked down to the school campus at five years old,
I was bullied, teased and tormented because of my disability.
I can remember my first bully, his name was Evan.
We were in kindergarten together.
One day, Evan came from behind me and yelled out the name
that my classmates had so affectionately given me
which was “blind kid”.
Came from behind me and yelled, “Hey blind kid” and as I turned around
he socked me square in the face.
Now, this wasn’t because of something I’d done to Evan.
I hadn’t taken his lunch or stolen his favorite toy.
He did it simply because I was different,
because of something I had no control over.
When you’re a kid growing up, you’re figuring out who you are,
your personality, you’re growing your self-confidence.
But instead, I was being told I was worthless,
subhuman
and deserved to be disabled.
When you hear that, day after day after day,
you start to believe it, you really do.
Most days after school, I’d come home crying
because of what happened at school,
and anticipating the torment coming the next day.
It got to the point when I was nine years old,
I was in fourth grade and I wanted to kill myself.
I’ll never forget the conversation
I had at the dinner table with my parents one night
after a particularly rough day of bullying.
I told them, I wanted to kill myself.
That’s something that no parent should ever have to hear,
let alone from a nine year old.
That’s truly how I felt at the time
and that’s how I felt for most of my childhood.
I was going down a really deep and dark path
with no end in sight really.
When I got to high school, I was really nervous.
I was going to a new school, I had very little friends,
and I was afraid the bullies would latch on to me again.
So, I decided to join a sports team
to make more friends and kind of insert myself in this social scene.
I decided to join the track and field team throw the shot put and discus.
I can recall going to the head track coach
and being like, “Hey, I’m a blind person and I want to throw shot put and discus”.
A blind person out there with shots and discus flying around.
What could go wrong, right?
But after talking to him a couple of times
I was able to convince him to let me join the team.
My freshman year in high school in track,
I stunk up the room, I was the worst thrower on the team by far,
but that year I met a person who really altered the course of my life.
He was a volunteer by the name of Coach Corbet,
he was our throwing coach.
Coach Corbet gave me something that up until that point of my life
I never have had.
He gave me a chance, he believed in me
and he treated me like everybody else on the team.
He saw past my disability.
The thing that society has deemed an irreversible barrier.
So he applauded me when I did well, but he got on my case
when I deserved it too.
My sophomore year, I started slowly improving and I was middle of the pack.
All of a sudden, all the coaching and tips from Coach Corbet just clicked
and I went from middle of the pack to the top of the conference.
At the end of that year, I’d taken second place in the conference in the shot put.
Coach Corbet belief me, helped me realize all the things I could do.
As a disabled person,
like I mentioned before, as a kid you’re told all these things you can’t do
and that’s the things you focus on.
Personally, Coach Corbet helped me focus on my abilities.
So sure, there’re some limitations to my eyesight,
I can’t drive, I can’t recognize people.
The army’s not recruiting me anytime soon to be a sniper,
although NFL has asked me to be a referee several times.
(Laughter)
But that mindset, that attitude
that Coach Corbet, a volunteer, helped me change,
it just altered the course of my entire life.
When I started getting good in track and field,
I knew I had found my passion, what I was good at,
what I was going to use to propel my life forward.
Shortly thereafter, I started competing internationally
for the blind in track and field.
I’ve gone on to win three world titles and I hold the American record in discus.
(Applause)
Currently, I train in judo at the Olympic Training Center in town
and I’ve got the best coaches and facilities in the entire country.
I’ve been able to travel the world and experienced things
I never thought were possible as a kid because of one person’ selfless act
to look beyond my disability.
What volunteers like Coach Corbet do
are vitally important to shaping young people, with disabilities,
but it is also a huge impact on adults who experience disability later in life.
I’ve witnessed that through my work;
I work for a nationwide non-profit
that provides sport and physical activity opportunities
for the blind and visually impaired.
One of our annual events is in Vermont.
We do a ski event there.
We usually have about 30 blind skiers and hundreds of ski volunteers
that make sure all our athletes are guided down the hill safely.
One of the athletes this past year was a former Marine.
He was overseas in Afghanistan in 2010
and an IED explosion took out his battalion.
While he survived, the explosion left him totally blind in both eyes.
I talked to this gentleman before the event, he had told me that
after this explosion, he never thought he’d be able to ski again.
It was one of the favorite activities,
he and his wife used to do together before the explosion.
So let’s fast forward to the event.
It’s day one.
He’s out there with his guides,
first day easing back into it on the bunny slopes.
Imagine going down a ski hill with no vision.
You might take it slow too.
Day two though, he was out there
zipping down huge black diamond mountains with a smile as big as the mountain.
Day three, volunteers taught his wife how to guide him
so they can ski together in the future, just like they did before his accident.
It again goes back to all the barriers that are put on people with disability.
The things we can’t do.
It’s reasonable to think that if you’re totally blind,
you’re not gonna be able to ski.
But imagine having that thought process and then imagine conquering a mountain
with no sight.
There’s nothing you can’t do.
What I witnessed that trip was a man
regaining his confidence, regaining his competitiveness,
and regaining the love for the things he did before his explosion.
That was all made possible
because of volunteers giving up a small amount of their time.
I truly believe that every single one of us humans
has an innate urge to help others and leave a lasting impact on this world.
Some of us can find that through our professions,
whether it’s being a doctor or a nurse or a teacher,
but others are still looking for that way that they too can impact people.
I challenge you all to take a page out of Coach Corbet‘s book
and enable the disabled.
Enable them by volunteering for local non-profits that serve the disabled
and support their programs through donations.
Finding these groups is as easy as doing a quick google search for
local non-profits in your area.
I guarantee you have some,
and I guarantee there’s an outlet for you.
No matter what your passion is,
whether it’s education, arts, sports or what have you.
You might be fearful of being around disabled people
like we talked about, that discomfort.
But I encourage you to get over that fear,
the same way that disabled people challenge their fears everyday
by living in a society that doesn’t accept them.
Think back to that person that had a profound impact on your life.
Shaping who you are.
Maybe it was a teacher, a coach or a mentor.
You now have that same opportunity to impact somebody’s life.
By supporting these groups that serve the disabled,
you are impacting in the largest minority group in the entire country.
Through peer support, acceptance,
providing opportunities they wouldn’t otherwise receive.
I would love to stand up here and tell you that disabled people are all doing great
and we don’t need your help, but that’s just not the truth.
While there are many cases of disabled people achieving success,
there’s a large group of disabled people
who are not even scratching the surface of their potential.
This again goes back to the stigma in society.
Being a disabled person right now in our society is like
being a shunned worker in a hostile work environment.
How can we expect you to be productive, if nobody wants to work with you,
your co-workers are uncomfortable around you
and you’re not receiving the same opportunities as everybody else.
It’s nearly impossible.
That’s why it’s up to all of us
to change that hostile environment to a warm, welcoming environment
where people are embraced for their skills and given opportunities,
not because we have to, but because we want to.
You’ll be enabling a group of people
who desperately want to be contributing members of a society,
but have been told time and time again they can’t.
Be the person that shows them they can,
be the person that helps them realize their potential
and helps them achieve their goals.
I was able to achieve one of my goals about a year ago.
I was in Seoul, Korea for the world championships for the blind.
I just won my second world title in the discus that day
and I had broken the American record too.
I was standing at the top of the medal podium,
the gold medal around my neck.
American national anthem booming throughout this 50,000 seat stadium.
I started thinking back to how far I’d come to get to that point
from the kid who cried himself to sleep every night
to the nine year old who wanted to kill himself.
Then I thought about all the people that came into my life
who believed in me.
They gave me a chance, they gave me their time
and they gave me a new lease on life.
For a long time, this right here is what defined me,
I was the blind kid,
but because of those people coming in and seeing past my disability,
this right here, that no longer defines me.
Because of those people going the extra mile
and making sure I reached my potential,
this right here is what defines me.
(Applause)
I wouldn’t be alive today if it weren’t for all those things.
I wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for all those people who helped redefine who I am.
You all have that power too and I recommend you use it.
Thank you.
(Applause)