Join us for a special virtual edition of our annual celebration and fundraising event from Wednesday, November 17th through Friday, November 19th. We’re so excited to share the gala with disability community members and allies from across the country and around the world, who usually wouldn’t be able to attend in-person.
We’re happy to announce that Hari Srinivasan will be our Master of Ceremonies!
Image description: A young Indian American man in his 20s with black hair under a white baseball cap. He is wearing jeans and a long sleeved gray shirt that says California Golden Bears. He is standing next to a stone railing.
Hari Srinivasan is a minimally-speaking autistic student at UC Berkeley. He is on ASAN’s Board of Directors and a 2019 alumnus of our Autism Campus Inclusion program! At UC Berkeley, Hari is a student journalist for the Daily Californian, student instructor for a class on autism, research assistant at the UC Berkeley Psychology and Disability Labs, and was the first nonspeaking president of the student group, Autism:Spectrum At Cal. As a Haas Scholar, he is doing research on how autistic people experience awe. Hari was recently selected to serve on the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee, which advises federal policy and priorities around autism. We are so grateful for Hari’s dedicated advocacy!
Hari hopes to bring attention to issues which impact disabled people in myriad areas and across the lifespan. He also wants to emphasize the urgency to include and address the issues faced by the more marginalized groups and higher support needs within the autism and larger disability community, including their mental, physical healthcare needs and comorbidities. When the voices of select groups get left out of the conversation, it negatively impacts their access to spaces, resources, funding, policy and quality of life.
We are full of autistic awe that Hari will host our annual gala and hope that you can come celebrate with us!
Gala tickets are donate-what-you-can, but no donation will be required to attend our virtual gala events. Proceeds will support our advocacy work and programs for the coming year, and allow us to continue working to empower disabled people across the country. If you’re able, please consider donating to support our work. If you are not able to donate, no worries -- we’re just happy to have you celebrating with us!
Honorees and other programming will be announced in the coming weeks.
You can RSVP to our Facebook event and invite your friends! We’re excited to celebrate together.
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