Please note: as this is a virtual program, the start-time is 10 AM Pacific Daylight Time

Live closed captioning will be provided for this event.

Fadi El Halabi is Executive Director, Ecumenical Disability Advocates Network in Beirut, Lebanon (and is also a psychologist/couples’ therapist, TV commentator, and a competitive ballroom/Latin dancer) who first visited Portland in 2017 as part of the U.S. Department of State's International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) administered by FHI 360 and WorldOregon. The IVLP is a mid-career professional exchange program that brings leaders from across the world to network with their professional counterparts and build collaborative relationships with Americans.  While in Portland and the surrounding region, he and his Lebanese colleagues participated in meetings, activities, site visits, and home hospitality.  The group forged extraordinary professional relationships and shared capacity building ideas focused on expanding the rights of people with disabilities. 

In conjunction with the 30th Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, El Halabi will virtually “return” to Portland to share how he has applied best-practices gained from his first program, to give U.S. audiences perspective on the status of disability inclusion in Lebanon, and to discuss how the COVD-19 pandemic has affected funding and future prospects for accessibility and inclusion programs for people with disabilities.  

Watch a short video on Fadi El Halabi’s WorldOregon program in 2017

Fadi El Halabi is an advocate for accessibility and inclusion for people with disabilities, a psychotherapist who counsels couples and adults, an instructor of psychology at Saint Joseph University, and a human relations trainer who focuses on civil society development. He is a regular commentator on television and radio programs on all of these topics. As Regional Coordinator and Executive Director of the Ecumenical Disability Advocates Network (EDAN), he promotes issues of urban accessibility, universal design, and educational inclusion. In 2019, he led a national advocacy campaign engaging a coalition of 70 NGO and academic partners to push the Lebanese parliament to ratify the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

This program is funded by the U.S. Department of State and administered by FHI 360 in partnership with WorldOregon.