Disabilities Awareness

1. Visit an agency that works with the physically, sensory, or mentally handicapped. Collect publications about the agency's on behalf of its members. Learn what is being done through training, employment, and education of their members.
2. Speak to a person with a disability or read an article or book about a person with a disability and report to your counselor what you learned about that person's experiences in dealing with a disability.
3. Spend 15 hours within a 3-month period in ONE of the following ways:
   1. Visit a special Cub Scout pack or Boy Scout troop. that works with Scouts with disabilities. Learn about their activities, assist the leaders, and work with the members of the group.
   2. Enlist the help of your unit leader and the parents or guardians of someone with a disabling condition and invite the disabled individual to join your troop, team, or post. Help him or her become a participating member.
4. Locate and study literature about the accessibility or nonaccessibility of public or private places to the disabled individuals. Observe and discuss with your counselor the accessibility or nonaccessibility for disabled people in the following:
   1. Five places with good accessibility,
   2. Five places with poor accessibility,
   3. Your school, church, synagogue, or mosque
   4. Your Scout camping site.
5. Display in a public place the material you have collected for the other requirements of this merit badge so that others can be made more aware of citizens with disabilities.
6. Make a commitment to your merit badge counselor as to what you will do in the future for those people with disabling conditions. Discuss how your awareness has changed as a result of what you learned.