This article was originally published in The Provider, a statewide publication by The Providers’ Council, distributed to human services organizations and lawmakers across the state.
November 1, 2025
Every year we take over the town of Dalton for a day. More than 700 of us walk through the main street wearing the same shirts, led by a friendly police escort. It’s a short one-mile walk, but it’s a powerful image of a massive group united around one issue.
Berkshire County Arc’s mission is to support and enrich the lives of people with disabilities. To do that — to do anything in human services — requires the full engagement and embracement of the entire community.
This one-day event — called the Buddy- Walk — is not about raising money. It’s about raising awareness for people with Down Syndrome. The impact reverberates far beyond the energy and excitement of the moment. It helps to counter stereotypes, create accessible environments, remove barriers and recognize our presence in community life.
Bringing people together can do all that.
Legislators walk. The high school cheerleaders walk, as do sports teams, as does their principal. Now in our 19th year, we have the momentum of all corners of the community — grandkids, grandparents, people with no connection to disabilities but feel the importance of support and feel the pride and joy of the event.
These unifying events can seem distracting to the core service of your agency. Afterall, delivering your services at a peak level is hard enough. But awareness, educating the community, shouting about the unknown force and talent and dreams of the disability community — these are worthy goals all by themselves. And they help pave the way toward enhancing the delivery of your programs.
We do other events that may not seem central to our mission, but we think they are. For example, we host a film festival open to the public, for free, with international films, which feature individuals with disabilities.
This event is small. But we continue to produce it, until it also grows into an annual ritual for a critical mass. And perhaps it stays small but achieve other important goals — inspiring and energizing your staff and leadership, influencing the influencers of your community or reminding everyone why we do this work.
The disability community is everywhere — supermarkets, sports events, restaurants — yet they are never seen. As individuals, they and their families can feel invisible.
Berkshire County Arc supports more than 1,000 individuals and their families. We are in the community of the Berkshires and the Pioneer Valley every day. Dozens and dozens of us at the movies, out to eat, planting community gardens, walking through downtowns. For these acts, we are integrated on purpose. We are the community. Despite all this, we know that the most vulnerable populations are everywhere but never seen. This is why they feel invisible.
All of us need to see that community awareness is essential to our work — community by community. It’s not an option if we are to succeed together.
This year there were around 100 Buddy Walks across the country — three in Massachusetts. For our walk, we partner with the local Down Syndrome Family Group, a group of families that pursue events to raise awareness and support their community.
While our Buddy Walk is one day long, the image stays with people for the year, lands on the local front page, and spreads across social media groups that make social media scrollers pause for a second or two before moving on. Yes, it takes this much work to cut through the noise and get some moments of attention. But it is work we have to do .
Maryann Hyatt, MBA, DBA
President & CEO
