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This is a condition, illness, impairment, or dysfunction that does not show outward or visually identifiable cues. Some examples of an invisible illness or disability (depending on how the Individual with the condition chooses to self-identify): Type 1 Diabetes, Lupus, Hashimotos Disease, Cancer, Schizophrenia, Multiple Sclerosis, PTSD, ADHD, Alzheimer's, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, Celiac Disease, Borderline Personality Disorder, Anxiety Disorders, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Blindness, Deafness, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, Fibromyalgia, Bipolar Disorder, and many more. 

Self-advocacy is a continuous learning process where you identify and fight for your own beliefs and ideals. As disabled community members trying to be included in a society not designed with us in mind, it is important to learn what you need to function, its potential substitutes, and to speak up when it is missing. Not everyone in our community is the position to self-advocate all the time or in a situation where it will have meaningful results, which is why we need empowered students and self-identified disabled professionals in roles to redesign the system itself and not allow the "falling through the cracks" that is happening to an unacceptable number of people with support needs.

Biodiversity as a concept is not new, as it has been present in our understanding of ecosystems and the biological variation within a species (intraspecies) and between different species (interspecies). Biodiversity drives growth and evolution. There are economic, ecological, recreational, cultural, and scientific benefits from increasing levels of biodiversity. Now consider our society, full of creatures that are also striving for autonomy, connection, and interdependence. Our inclusion of biodiversity as a foundational concept of our organization is to emphasize the importance of difference in a functioning ecosystem. We are not pursuing competition, but mutualism (both benefit). 

By launching this website, we are taking our first step into larger scale community interaction while we develop the RIT pilot program for our student support program, as well as a pilot on the effectiveness of our communication solution in the hospital. We want to be working directly with the community receiving ongoing feedback from the beginning to avoid building a disconnected organization from our community we aim to support. 

Some of our organizational goals in the coming years, calibrated to our RIT Pilot:

• Create workshops to support skills necessary for self-advocacy during your education

• Have disabled and chronically ill professionals, potentially alumni or figures affiliated with RIT specifically, come in as guest speakers to share their journey and hurdles to promote transparency and preparedness

•  Weekly virtual meetings to provide community support during a potentially lonely process of applying for accommodations and maintaining the communication surrounding them

•  As well as to hear the day-to-day concerns of students that may require additional attention

• Combat isolation by creating a safe space virtually to check in and connect

• Accessible community service opportunities for those who want to give back but are typically not considered in community service event planning.

• Create multidisciplinary teams to solve real-world accessibility problems brought to the club or prompted by club leaders

• Be involved in a real-worlds project that improve the experience of those with chronic illness and disability pursuing higher education.