Role of NCPD:

- Coordinated with event planners and Hotel staff to address all disability accommodation requests. These requests included ensuring wheelchair access, as well as coordinating ASL interpreters for the sessions and for the online live-stream. 

- Appointed delegates with disabilities to participate in regional sessions to express their needs, concerns, and ideas. V Encuentro was able to fund 7 of these delegates with scholarships.

- Invited a team of disability experts to speak on a panel about disability and the Church. 
        

Vision:

Members of the Hispanic community bring the richness of their families and traditions to the life of the Catholic Church, including those with disabilities or those who are Deaf. They, like all baptized Catholics, have inherent dignity and rights to the grace of the sacrament. Pastors and parish leaders must provide needed accommodation so that they can meaningfully participate in parish life, use their gifts in ministries such as ushers, lectors, choir members, ministers of hospitality, Extraordinary Eucharistic Ministers, or as clergy and as consecrated religious. 

Statistics: 

- 1 of 6 Hispanics live with disabilities in the United States (CDC)

- 30.4 million Hispanic people identify as Catholics in the United States and 55% of Hispanic Catholics attend Church in the United States (CARA)

- 16% of Hispanic adults in the United States experience mental illness (NIMH)

- 1 in 71 Hispanic children have Autism Spectrum Disorder (CDC)

- Families raising children with disabilities have a poverty rate of 21.8% compared with 12.6% of families raising children without disabilities (Census 2000 Special Report)