The Women and Girls Foundation launched the Training Regional Advocates to Influence Leadership (TRAIL) program in 2020, in collaboration with Dr. Josie Badger. The goal of the program was to develop a statewide legislative advocacy training program for people with disabilities. TRAIL has been a virtual advocacy training program that supports advocates with disabilities in learning strategies to make systemic change.
This video describes TRAIL and why people with disabilities should be involved in systemic change.
Trainees gained skills to advocate for the needs of the disability community; learned about the history of disability rights; developed methods of advocating and working with legislators; and became informed experts on critical policies like paid family and medical leave. Program participants learned how to tell their personal stories, and several had those stories published as op-eds in newspapers throughout the state. They met with state and federal legislators and became a strong empowered group of powerful advocates and engaged citizens.
All 34 trainees participated in various meetings and town halls with legislators and decision-makers.
TRAIL Explorer supported advocates with disabilities in learning strategies to make systemic change through learning about how laws are made, how politics play a role in decisions that impact our lives, and how to directly ask for a change. This course examined methods to work with in legislation and politics. Classes included: recap the importance of sharing your story; understanding political beliefs and parties; creating consensus; and utilizing existing tools to have the greatest impact.
All 23 graduates completed a project as a conclusion to this course. Projects on paid family and medical leave included:
A five-minute video that could be shared online or through an email on paid family and medical leave
Development of a TRAIL class
Outline and script for a meeting with a Republican and a Democrat legislator
A week social media plan
The TRAIL Blazers course was held January-May 2022. It was completed by 19 advocates with disabilities. This course was developed for previous TRAIL trainings and advanced advocates. It focused on working with legislative and gubernatorial candidates. Through this course, trainees developed a set of eight topical information sheets regarding issues facing Pennsylvanians with disabilities and parallel policy recommendation sheets. Participants also hosted two candidate forums. Participants created the format, develop the questions, advertised, and facilitated both forums. The candidates’ answers are available in video and written summary form on a newly developed webpage to allow voters to review all of their perspectives. 20 advocates graduated from this course.