One of the grants that Modest Needs offer is the Independent Living Grant, a grant specially designed to assist those living with disabilities. To give you an idea of the difficulties these individuals face, here are a few statistics pulled from a blog post that paint a grim portrait:
- About 10% of the non-institutionalized working-age population in the United States lives with a disability (not including psychiatric disabilities).
- 25-30% of (non-institutionalized) people with disabilities (aged 21-64) were living below the poverty line in 2008, compared to 9.6% of people without disabilities who were below the poverty line.
- One third of employers surveyed said that persons with disabilities cannot effectively perform the required job tasks. The second most common reason given for not hiring persons with disabilities was the fear of costly special facilities.
- The unemployment rate for people with disabilities was 14.8% in 2010, compared to 9.4% for people without disabilities.
In addition to their disabilities, these people have to also deal with discrimination, higher unemployment rates and the struggle to stay above the poverty line, which is tragic and, honestly, unacceptable.
If you'd like to browse some of our requests for Independent Living Grants, and help to ease some of these unfair burdens, you can do so in our database.
[Photo by Warren Rohner]
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