Last year's Executive Director's report focused on the early reforms and accomplishments of the FAR Fund and its grantees. This year I want to describe some of the new initiatives of the Fund.

The FAR Fund Fellowship was set up to mentor individuals to improve social service programs and social welfare systems. This year the Fellowship helped launch two programs. One is the first project in New York to provide legal representation for Haitian immigrant women who are victims of domestic violence. This program, created by Gina Cheron , is now housed at Dwa Fanm. After the program was designed during the Fellowship, it used a start-up grant from the FAR Fund to secure a large federal grant and created a fully-staffed legal unit. For more information contact Katlyn Jean at (718) 230-4027x308.

A second Fellow this year, Diana McCourt , is creating a wonderful new project, One Person at a Time , to help people with autism and other developmental disabilities secure individualized, self-directed housing. Currently almost no one with severe developmental disabilities in New York City has his or her own publicly funded apartment. The project will be launched in March 2005 with a grant from the FAR Fund and will be based at Job Path. If you are interested in learning more about the program, contact Diana at (212) 944-0564. The FAR Fund staff once again has experienced the bittersweet departure of a Fellow whose presence has enriched our lives but is now off and running a project of her own. The next Fellow will start in the spring, designing a project to prevent violence against youth.

The FAR Fund is also designing a new employment internship program for people on the autistic spectrum. Young adults who have Asperger's Syndrome, or are high functioning on the autistic spectrum and want to work, will be able to apply for a three-month internship at the Fund. We will assess their needs, place the person in a job with a grantee of the Fund for Social Change (the FAR Fund and the Child Welfare Fund), and provide a salary. An Education Specialist (job coach) will accompany them daily, and then help them secure a long-term job. Job Path and Hunter College 's Department of Special Education are collaborating in this initiative. We anticipate launching the program in the early fall. If you want to learn more about the program or are interested in having your agency be a job site for one of these workers, contact Kaajal Shah , Program Officer of the FAR Fund, who is spearheading the project.

The FAR Fund, in collaboration with the Child Welfare Fund, convened a forum at the Open Society Institute to bring together advocates in the fields of child welfare and developmental disabilities. These groups had never previously come together to learn from each other's experience. The forum produced an excellent report prepared by Hilary Russ, Learning from Experience, describing the rights won by parents and consumers in the mental retardation and developmental disabilities system and the lessons learned by parents and young people in the child welfare system. Both the FAR Fund and the Child Welfare Fund are interested in providing grants to implement the report's recommendations.

The FAR Fund also brought together a passionate, dedicated group of advocates and self-advocates, parents, providers, and researchers in the field of developmental disabilities to form the Campaign for Real Lives . The group will work and fight for “a ll people, regardless of age or type of disability, to have the opportunity to live the life they want, in the community in which they want to live, with the supports they need and control.” One of the Campaign's first and most exciting initiatives is to create the Developmental Disabilities Watch, modeled after the Child Welfare Watch. It will be published in the fall as an independent journal produced at the Center for New York City Affairs by the outstanding editor, Andrew White.

This is only the third year of the FAR Fund. We are thrilled by these new activities and by what has been accomplished by the catalytic force of one small foundation. The grantees and the people they serve, and the staff of the FAR Fund owe a tremendous gratitude to the anonymous donor whose trust and delight in our work, keep us growing.

David Tobis