What would you buy with a gift of $35? Books? CDs? Dinner with friends?
In other words, pretty much what developmentally disabled people buy.
They get the chance every year courtesy of the Chicago Tribune Holiday Fund. Last year, the fund provided spending money of $35 each for 8,643 people.
They live in state and private group homes, with few, if any, frills. Their care is paid for by a combination of federal and state funds; the state allows them to keep $50 a month spending money.
So how did they spend their $35?
On poetry, in one case, said Elizabeth Lacey, executive director of Community Support Services, which runs group homes in the west suburbs.
“We have one elderly gentleman who enjoys poetry,” said Lacey, whose agency serves people with mental retardation, autism, epilepsy and cerebral palsy. “He’s written poetry and memorized poems. He used some of the money to buy books of simple poems, which he memorized.
“Another guy has a lifelong interest in trains. We have helped him to purchase model trains with his money and to set up, on a table in his bedroom, a whole little model train community.”
One man who loves to paint bought paper, brushes and paints, and now has an easel set up in his room. Several young women bought CDs for the boom boxes the agency helped them buy. “When you go over to their home, they’ll bring out their boom box and their CDs, and they’ll dance,” Lacey said.
Some people have used the money for urgent practical needs like haircuts or clothes for job interviews. Others have used it to go out to dinner.
“More often than not, they’re going to spend it like we would,” said Ed Kulasa, executive director of LARC, a Lansing-area agency that operates group homes in the south suburbs. Like Community Support Services, it is a member of the Association for Retarded Citizens of Illinois, an advocacy group that gets the Tribune grant and passes it along to agencies that provide services.
“Some are going to buy things for their bedrooms–a lamp, pillowcases, a new picture for the wall. Other individuals may buy CDs, videotapes, perfume, jewelry, scarves or gloves.
“It’s really up to them,” Kulasa said. “We go to the local mall or the local business district, and they spend it any which way they want.”
The gift of spending money has a programmatic purpose. It gives developmentally disabled people an opportunity to make their own choices. And when it brings them to the mall, it brings them further into the world around them.
But it has a happy side benefit for the rest of us–a lesson on how much we are alike.
We are all shopping for CDs and pillowcases and poetry. We all enjoy a creative outlet, a small luxury, an evening out with friends.
“These are the things that give your life meaning,” said Lacey.
Some of us come by our spending money easier than others. This would be a good place to spend yours.
