As a mother raising two children with disabilities, Margaret Doumitt found that she had little or no access to options in education and services that addressed her children’s needs. Margaret decided to act when few others could -- or would. So, in 1988, she founded the STAR Center as an assistive technology and advocacy group to serve children and adults with disabilities and their families.
Over the past seventeen years, STAR Center has assisted local and state leaders in identifying gaps in services for individuals with disabilities and developing programs where none existed. To achieve the center’s unique mission, Margaret helped design and implement eighteen innovative programs to assist individuals with disabilities in achieving educational goals, training for and securing employment, and living independently. Margaret’s advocacy efforts have overcome many of the barriers that prevented people with disabilities from attaining critically needed services, including conventional and assistive technologies, therapeutic treatments, employment training, and job placement. She and her staff serve children and adults with disabilities, ranging in age from three months to 103-years-old, regardless of their ability to pay.
Starting with an all-volunteer staff in a donated schoolroom, Margaret’s leadership has expanded the STAR Center to include two facilities and a staff of fifty highly specialized assistive technology professionals. STAR Center now helps individuals with disabilities in 21 counties throughout west Tennessee. With eighteen innovative programs to its credit and by the numbers of individuals it serves, STAR Center has become one of the largest assistive technology centers in the nation, and many of the programs have won acclaim as national models.
Margaret is a visionary leader working within the system to improve it. She began STAR Center as a volunteer, but within the first year she hired the center’s first rehabilitation teacher. Margaret identifies needs, finds partners, and develops programs where none exists. She actively networks, connecting private, public, and business resources and agencies to develop a community of support open to all citizens. Enabling children and adults with disabilities is not a vocation for Margaret; it is her life's purpose. Margaret’s efforts not only enrich west Tennessee’s quality of life, but also our very sense of what community is and how to achieve it.
To learn more about The STAR Center, please visit www.starcenter.tn.org
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