* Besides bringing her North Star Can Do! Workshops to the New England schools that book her and her workshops, Maribeth also contracts with organizations to offer "ability focused" disability awareness programs in their communities on the organizations' behalf... usually funded by grants the organizations have received to implement the program. For example, Maribeth developed and has coordinated Maine Easter Seal's disability awareness outreach program for elementary schools in Southern Maine for the past two years.

Maribeth Bush brings "ability" message to southern Maine elementary schools, by John Begin (this article appeared in the Spring 1998 issue of The Tree, official newsletter of the Pine Tree Society for Handicapped Children and Adults, Maine's Easter Seal Society)

During the 1996-97 school year, Maribeth Bush took her Disability Awareness Program on the road, meeting with nearly 700 southern Maine students in 36 presentations designed to better educate them about disabilities and the people who have them.

With spring at hand, the coordinator of the successful Maine Easter Seal program is back on the road, expecting to meet with more than 1,000 students in the greater Portland area alone before the end of the school year.

"With the presentations I've completed and those I have scheduled, I'll be speaking to at least 53 classrooms during the 1997-98 school year," Bush said recently, adding that many of her workshops were scheduled during March's Disability Awareness Months. She noted the month of April also filled up quickly.

Bush said that while March is recognized nationally as Disability Awareness Month by educators and organizations, her goal is to make every month Disability Awareness Month - or, as Maribeth puts it, "Ability Awareness Month."

"My presentations are designed to initiate discussion and education about the challenges faced by individuals who live with disabilities as well as their many abilities and achievements," Bush said. "They are intended to inpsire acceptance, tolerance and appreciation and individual differences and abilities."

The Pine Tree Society, Maine's Easter Seal Society, offers the educational program free to southern Maine students in kindergarten through sixth grade thanks to a generous grant from the UNUM Foundation in Portland.

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