CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) — It was a surprise when Karen Tamley — President and CEO of Access Living of Metro Chicago — heard from MacKenzie Scott.
The philanthropist has given the organization for people with disabilities the largest donation it’s ever gotten from an individual donor.
Access Living had no idea the organization was on MacKenzie Scott’s radar. But Karen Tamley said the ex-wife of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos knew of Access Living’s work and wanted to assist in it.
Tamley said some of the money will fuel efforts to confront poverty among people with disabilities, who are twice as likely to be poor as the rest of the population.
“There’s many disability benefits out there that have income and asset limits, so you’re not able to get additional income easily without it impacting your [supplemental security income] and perhaps your health care,” Tamley said. “We really want to look at this from both a root causes perspective, but also from an individual perspective in helping people do things like build credit or repair credit.”
Poverty, she said, affects every other issue that Access Living works on, and Tamley added that many of the people served by Access Living are on social security or supplemental security income.
Tamley, though, said she knows you can’t just throw money at the problem.
“We want to do both a combination of, you know, direct services to really support the financial stability of people with disabilities, but also look at the systems that are keeping people with disabilities trapped in poverty,” she said.
We learn more about Access Living and its mission on WBBM’s “At Issue” program this weekend, and you can hear more Sunday evening at 9:30.
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