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New name, same objectives Photo by Jim Craven Kate Baxted, director of Disability Advocacy for Social and Independent Living, answers a call at the organization's Medford office. DASIL will celebrate its new offices today with an open house. Advocacy group for the disabled is reborn, plans an open house By JONEL ALECCIA Three months after budget cuts closed the Jackson County branch of HASL -- the Handicap Awareness and Support League -- the organization is back with new offices and a new name. But the group now called DASIL -- Disability Advocacy for Social and Independent Living -- retains its original purpose: to help disabled people live independently by providing equipment, advocacy and social support. "We're really stubborn," said Georgia Prince, 40, who chairs the board of the new agency from her wheelchair. "We're going to make this work one way or another." The new DASIL Center will host an open house from 3 to 6 p.m. today at 130 W. Sixth St., Medford. Inaugural activities include a raffle, an auction and refreshments. Funding for HASL ended last October, when organizers of the agency based at Rogue Community College in Grants Pass could no longer afford to support a Medford office. A freeze in federal funds forced HASL to trim its satellite services, said Kate Baxted, DASIL center director. Within days, however, Baxted and former HASL clients banded together to form a new agency on a shoestring. They pulled together a $2,000 grant from state disability services and combined it with whatever each client could afford. "This was done with money from her and him and her and her," said Baxted, gesturing toward a dozen folks who wheel and walk into the center regularly for support and guidance. Every day, 25 to 30 people disabled through car accidents, workplace injuries and spinal defects seek help at the center. For people such as Dane Woodward, 49, the support helps make life after a 1979 car accident bearable. "I come here every day," Woodward said. "I don't have any place else to go." Baxted and other DASIL advocates help Woodward negotiate the reams of paperwork required to receive disability services. More important, however, is the center's social role. Woodward and his girlfriend, Annette Hafer, 40, who's in a wheelchair, met and developed a romance under the watch of fellow DASIL organizers. The agency has helped the pair negotiate a maze of bureaucratic and practical obstacles to living together. "This is my family," Hafer said. DASIL is open from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Thursday and from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Fridays. For information call 608-6746. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA