[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 11]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 14951-14952]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]


TRIBUTE TO THE NORTHWEST CENTER'S 50 YEARS OF SERVICE AND ADVOCACY FOR 
                        PEOPLE OF ALL ABILITIES

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. JIM McDERMOTT

                             of washington

                    in the house of representatives

                       Monday, September 28, 2015

  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, today I rise to honor the 50th 
anniversary of Northwest Center. The Northwest Center is a leader in 
advancing equal opportunities for children and adults with 
developmental disabilities. Their unique social enterprise model 
provides services such as inclusive early childhood education, after 
school programs, job training and placement.
  Founded in 1965, Northwest Center was initiated by parents who 
refused to accept that institutionalizing their children with special 
needs was the only option for their education and enrichment. 
Washington State is a place of pioneers and it was in that spirit that 
these parents effected positive change for children everywhere.
  Fifty years later in 2015, Northwest Center continues to 
revolutionize the ways we think about people with abilities different 
than our own. Where Northwest Center's founding parents were once 
viewed as audacious for their

[[Page 14952]]

advocacy, today there is a generation of people living rich, productive 
lives because they were given the opportunity to thrive as a part of a 
community that nurtured them as part of its whole, instead of isolating 
them as separate and distinct.
  Northwest Center's 50th Anniversary celebrates the promise the 
organization made a half century ago, ``to promote the growth, 
development, and economic independence of persons with developmental 
disabilities through programs of education, rehabilitation, and work 
opportunity.'' Its revolutionary approach recognizes that inclusion, 
not segregation, is a fundamental tenet of a strong community--at 
school, at work and in the world around us. In Northwest Center 
classrooms, children with and without disabilities share high 
expectations. Innovative companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and 
Starbucks have embraced the advantages of workforce inclusion.
  Against this backdrop of revolutionary achievement, I salute 
Northwest Center and its founders for their leadership--not only in 
their programs, but in launching a groundbreaking attitudinal shift 
that impacts people across the state of Washington and across this 
country.

                          ____________________