After thirteen long years of planning, groundbreaking for the Ed Roberts Campus was held on September 4, 2008. Through the Looking Glass is one of seven partner disability organizations that joined together to build a universally designed, transit-oriented campus located at the Ashby BART Station in Berkeley.

Megan Kirshbaum, Executive Director of TLG, is pictured (second from the left) at this historic groundbreaking. For news articles on this historic event, see the San Francisco Chronicle (SF Chronicle - September 5, 2008), the Oakland Tribune (Oakland Tribune - September 4, 2008), and the Daily Californian (Daily Californian - September 5, 2008).

The Ed Roberts Campus honors the life and work of Ed Roberts, an early leader in the independent living movement. Ed wore many hats during his lifetime, one of them being Chair of TLG's Board of Directors. The Ed Roberts Campus will become the world's foremost disability rights service, advocacy, education, training, and policy center. The 86,000 square foot building is scheduled to open February 2010. To find out more about the Ed Roberts Campus, please see the website: http://www.edrobertscampus.org.

In addition to offering TLG much needed administrative and clinical space, the new campus will house TLG's new Child Development Center, integrating infants, toddlers and preschool children with and without disabilities. This Child Center will allow TLG to provide its own center-based services to children and families as another option in addition to our home-based services. The Child Center will also serve as a training site for childcare workers, early intervention and clinical interns, with an emphasis on training individuals with personal disability experience. TLG's Child Center at the ERC will apparently be the first such center to have emerged from the independent living movement. As with the rest of the ERC, the Child Center will serve as a model for national practice and universal design.

More than $46 million has been has been secured by the Ed Roberts Campus to cover the costs for planning, project management, design, land acquisition and building construction of the overall campus. Now that construction has begun, one of TLG's challenges is to raise funds for the design, internal construction and equipment for TLG's Child Center and offices that will be housed at the new campus. Please join us in this historic effort by contributing. Please click here for information on making a Donation.