ABOUT | RISE

Our Mission

Empower adults with disabilities by eliminating barriers, promoting and encouraging their citizenship, and assisting them in attaining and maintaining their own independent living goals.

Our Vision

Provide disabled individuals and their families with research, information, support, and empowerment designed to facilitate greater independence and build an inclusive and accessible society where all persons with disabilities are valued equally and participate fully.

Our Mandate

To be an organization run by people with disabilities for people with disabilities.

To offer opportunities for disabled persons to learn skills necessary for successful integration into the community including economic opportunity.

To develop and implement services, programs and activities that empower individuals rather than create dependencies.

To recognize that persons with disabilities have the right to take control of their own lives through increased knowledge and examination of options, making informed choices, and taking calculated risks.

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Land Acknowledgement

"We acknowledge that we are gathered on the traditional and ancestral territory of the Anishinaabeg peoples—specifically the Ojibwa, Potawatomi, and Odawa —under the enduring agreements of the Robinson-Huron Treaty of 1850 and the Williams Treaties of 1923, who have lived and cared for this land since the earliest days. We recognize their ongoing connection to the land, water, and community. We express our gratitude and respect as we work to learn from their traditions and continue the journey toward truth and reconciliation." May we journey forward together, guided by mutual respect, understanding, and the hope for a more just future.

History of RISE

Kathie Horne is a person living with a permanent physical disability and grew up in the Parry Sound area. While getting her Masters Degree in Winnipeg, Manitoba, during the 1980’s, Kathie became acquainted with some of the founders of the Independent Living movement in Canada.

In the early 1990’s, Kathie laid the ground work to begin an Independent Living Centre in the Parry Sound / Muskoka Districts by bringing a number of people with disabilities in the area together including her husband, Robert Foster.

With the support of other Independent Living Centres in Ontario as well as the Canadian Association of Independent Living Centres (CAILC), RISE: Resource Centre for Independent Living was incorporated as a non-profit, charitable organization on October 22,1998.

RISE received federal funding through CAILC to operate its office as well as other funding sources, both federally and provincially over the years. As an incorporated non-profit charitable organization, RISE has a set of Board of Directors who initially came from the group of people Kathie Horne had brought together and Kathie became the initial Executive Director. Many years have gone by since then, and Kathie Horne has come full circle. She was awarded an Honorary Life Member on RISE's Board of Directors in January 2023.

CAILC later became known as Independent Living Canada (IL Canada). There are 24 Independent Living Resource Centres (ILRC’s) across Canada. Of the 24 ILRC’s, there are 11 Independent Living Resource Centres (ILRC’s) in Ontario.

Independent Living Movement

Independent Living (IL) is a vision, a philosophy, and a movement of people with disabilities. Born on California university campuses in the 1970s, the movement spread to Canada in the 1980s and has since reached around the globe, changing how people view and respond to people with disabilities.

Independent Living was founded on the right of people with disabilities to:

Live with dignity in their chosen community.
Participate in all aspects of their lives; and
Control and make decisions about their own lives.

The IL vision and philosophy have been articulated through the Independent Living movement – a network of individuals and community-based resource Centres across the country supported by a national organization, Independent Living Canada.

Independent Living Mission

The Independent Living movement is founded on the right of persons with disabilities to live with dignity in their chosen community, participate in and make decisions about their own life.

“Disability is not a point of individual or social tragedy but a natural and necessary part of human diversity. The tragedy of disability is not our minds or bodies but oppression, exclusion, and marginalization.”

Author Unknown

Guiding Principles

Those who know best the needs of disabled people and how to meet those needs are the disabled people themselves.
The needs can be met most effectively by programs which provide a variety of services, rather than having to go to several different agencies for services.
Disabled people should be as integrated as possible into the community.

The IL movement differs from traditional service provider organizations by emphasizing peer support, self-direction, and community integration by and for people with disabilities themselves. The IL model embraces the notion that rights and responsibilities are shared between citizens and the state, focusing on building a country based on the principles of inclusion, equity, affordability, and justice.

Independent Living Resource Centres do not engage in collective advocacy. Instead, the IL movement teaches people with disabilities how to advocate for themselves.

While Independent Living does not aim to make a person “normal” in a physical, mental, or societal sense, the movement emphasizes the value of people with disabilities having the full range of ordinary life experiences.