Looking Back on NDEAM 2023 — and the Impact Nationwide
Filed under Disability Awareness & Confidence, Inclusive Hiring, NDEAM
Reading time: 6 min. | Posted by Dean Askin
October’s a few days behind us now. There’s a winter chill in the air. National Disability Employment Awareness Month (NDEAM) and our annual NDEAM campaign is over for another year.
Now it’s time to keep the conversation going. Too often, disability gets left out of the business conversation about diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).
October is the sole month focused on recognizing the contributions people who have a disability make to businesses and communities. That’s why at ODEN we use it for raising awareness about the importance of making the disability inclusion connection, on all its levels.
NDEAM campaigns drive conversation forward
The NDEAM campaigns — including ODEN’s — that happen across North America every October are catalysts. They’re intended to drive disability inclusion conversation and action forward. So disability-inclusive hiring becomes business as usual. In every business. In every community.
Joe Hoffer puts it this way: “I’m seeing progress…but it’s incremental; it’s not fast enough as far as I’m concerned.”
He’s an ODEN Business Champion and a partner in the London, ON, law firm Cohen Highley LLP. He expressed that view on the state of disability inclusion in the first episode of the new Making the Journey series on our You Can’t Spell Inclusion Without a D podcast. It was a great conversation. Joe Hoffer has some deep insights for other business leaders about making the disability inclusion connection.
In Making the Journey, we talk one-on-one with business leaders at companies that have successfully made the disability-inclusive hiring journey. Cohen Highley has been an inclusive employer for 35 years and forged an example path for other businesses in Southwestern Ontario to follow.
We released this new episode (Episode 16) October 24. If you haven’t yet heard it yet, give it a listen.
Creating a dynamic campaign with impact
Every year, ODEN strives to develop an NDEAM campaign that’s dynamic. That gets people thinking. That engages them. That inspires and motivates them to have conversations about and take action on, disability inclusion. That raises disability awareness and confidence far and wide.
This year’s overall campaign, and Light It Up! For NDEAM 2023 — the flagship event, did all of these things in a big way. Just how big, is what I’ve been finding out only in the last few days.
The Light It Up! For NDEAM 2023 numbers mean there was an incredible amount of engagement and conversation about disability inclusion in many big cities, small towns and rural communities across the country.
On Friday (October 20) ODEN sent out a news release about how the record participation in Light It Up! For NDEAM 2023 reflects increasing conversation about disability inclusion in communities across Canada.
In that release, we said 477 locations in 140 communities across all 10 provinces and in two territories, had shone purple and blue light on disability awareness in this country.
Those are the numbers we were aware of at the time.
How wrong we were. In a really good way.
It turns out there were 640 locations in 145 communities that we officially know about. There could be even more that we simply haven’t been told about. Light It Up! For NDEAM has developed its own momentum.
Those numbers mean there was an incredible amount of engagement and conversation about disability inclusion between job seekers, families, community agencies, businesses and local governments in so many big cities, small towns and rural communities across the country.
Phenomenal efforts nationwide
A lot of people across Canada put in outstanding efforts at the community level to make Light it Up! For NDEAM so successful this year.
Like the consultants at Inclusion Langley Society in Langley, BC, who got 90 businesses involved.
And in the small communities of Beauséjour and Lac du Bonnet, MB, where virtually every business in town participated.
Light It Up! For NDEAM is having much more impact than ODEN ever imagined it would when we started the event in Ontario. Realizing what this event has become in just a few years is inspiring.
Or down in New Brunswick, where 50 local businesses and organizations across rural Eastern Charlotte County shone purple and blue on October 19.
These three examples stick out in my mind because of the sheer numbers in relation to community size. But this kind of thing is happening across the country. Many people, community organizations and businesses in many other places — large and small — deserve credit.
It’s the collaboration that counts most
ODEN leads Light It Up! For NDEAM, but it happens nationally through a whole lot of collaboration right down to the community agency level. That’s what makes Light It Up! For NDEAM unique from other cause-lighting events.
It’s the only event of its kind in Canada during National Disability Employment Awareness Month. We make it easy for anyone to participate in Light It Up! For NDEAM. That’s because we want involvement to increase like this every year. The more the involvement, the greater the impact.
Light It Up! For NDEAM truly has evolved from a one-night awareness lighting event to a national movement that ignites conversation about disability inclusion. The conversations Light It Up! For NDEAM starts will have a lasting impact nationwide that can affect change. And that’s important, because access to employment is still a major barrier for people who have a disability.
Honestly, Light It Up! For NDEAM is having much more impact than ODEN — and me, the National Campaign Co-ordinator — ever imagined it would when we started the event in Ontario. For all of us at ODEN, realizing what this event has become in just a few years is inspiring.
Light It Up! For NDEAM is increasing collaboration in the disability sector. Traditionally, awareness campaigns during NDEAM are “siloed” in individual regions and provinces that celebrate NDEAM. Light It Up! For NDEAM has become a common national thread with a unified message that any organization can join in to help us all achieve a common goal. Which is, increasing disability awareness and confidence, leading to more, productive and equitable employment opportunities for Canadians who have a disability.
A few Light It Up! For NDEAM 2023 “firsts”
Several communities across Canada joined the Light It Up! For NDEAM movement for the first time: Dawson Creek, District of Mackenzie and Williams Lake way up in northern BC. Owen Sound, ON, on Georgian Bay. And the First Nations community of Walpole Island in Southwestern ON.
In Brantford, ON, the City of Brantford unveiled a new City Hall external lighting system to the public — by inaugurally lighting City Hall purple and blue for Light It Up! For NDEAM 2023.
Some major corporations participated for the first time this year: Six Coca-Cola Bottling Ltd. locations nationwide lit up purple and blue. TELUS illuminated three of their office towers, in Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver.
A lot of people participated in the overall NDEAM 2023 campaign with us.
Some overall NDEAM 2023 campaign highlights
This year for the first time, we marked Invisible Disabilities Week (October 15-21, 2023) in the middle of NDEAM. Disability is diverse, and invisible disabilities are the most common disabilities in North America. Be sure to read the insightful guest blog post by Wayne Connell.
One of the things we always highlight during NDEAM, is our Disability Myth Quiz. Over 250 people invested time doing the quiz to test their level of disability awareness and knowledge. Another 35 people outside Canada did the quiz. That’s encouraging. Because there’s still a significant general lack of awareness about disability.
And a lot of people participated in the overall NDEAM 2023 campaign with us.
Over 200 people accessed our online NDEAM PR tool kit that’s full of informative resources to use and share.
Most of them were in Ontario. But people in other provinces also used the NDEAM PR Tool Kit web page. Even a handful of people outside Canada used it! The more the involvement, the greater the impact. That’s why ODEN created the online kit.
Measuring campaign reach
Planning for the NDEAM campaign and Light It Up! For NDEAM starts early in the year. The goal is always this: Create a campaign with a message that resonates and reaches as many people as possible to raise disability awareness. This year, the message in our Making the Disability Inclusion Connection campaign, and the message behind Light It Up! For NDEAM, reached over 27 million people. All across Canada, and around the world.
Thanks to everyone locally, regionally and nationally who got involved in NDEAM and Light It Up! For NDEAM with ODEN this year. ODEN’s communications team creates and co-ordinates campaign elements. But you all make it happen so successfully by using the Light It Up! For NDEAM and NDEAM PR kits.
Thinking ahead to NDEAM 2024 — already
And now it’s time — as a Communications Strategist — to start thinking about NDEAM 2024. That’s just the way it is for communicators. That’s the way we work; the way we think. As soon as this year’s event is over, you start planning for next year’s.
Communicators live by deadlines. And by the adage, “if you fail to plan, then plan to fail.” At the root of every successful campaign like NDEAM 2023, there’s a comprehensive communications plan. (Mine are usually about 50 pages long.)
I guarantee there’s another 50-page plan for ODEN and NDEAM in my future. After all October’s only 11 months away.
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Dean Askin is the Communications Strategist for the Ontario Disability Employment Network.