IRIS strengthens leadership, organizational capacity and constituencies for transformative change by:
•Creating platforms for partners to learn, collaborate, strengthen capacity and build solidarity in working towards full inclusion and accessibility
•Designing and delivering information resources and training strategies to scale out innovations for inclusive and accessible services, supports and community systems
•Working with partners to develop roadmaps for transforming systems – from the ‘bottom up’ and the ‘top down’
Current Projects
Past Projects
Our Right to be Safe!
Timeframe: January 2012 to December 2015
Objective: To mobilize local communities and sectors involved in violence prevention and response to implement a coordinated, local-level community response to violence and abuse by identifying and removing access barriers so as to increase all women’s participation and safety in their communities.
Our Health Matters!
Timeframe: January 2012 to December 2014
Objective: To develop resources, education and training sessions aimed at persons with disabilities as well as key health care professionals to pursue secondary prevention of cancer involving early detection and increasing access to cancer screening.
Towards a Global Campaign on Advancing Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
Timeframe: January 2018 to March 2021
This initiative builds on earlier phases which provided technical support to civil society organizations in Zambia, Bulgaria and Colombia to achieve national scale impact in reforming laws, policies and practices regulating the exercise of legal capacity, or the power to exercise choice and control over one’s personal decisions. The initiative includes developing an online platform, networks and resources to grow civil society capacity to address long-standing barriers to the equal right of persons with disabilities to exercise choice, power and control in their own lives.
Supported by Open Society Foundations.
Pathways to Homeownership Demonstration Initiative
Timeframe: January 2019 to December 2021
This Demonstration Initiative seeks to increase the capacity of the housing sector to improve housing stability, affordability, and choice for people with developmental disabilities by replicating innovative models of homeownership. It will help make homeownership attainable for more Canadians with developmental disabilities by generating and spreading knowledge about how these models work.
With financial support from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.