NMPASI to celebrate 30 years of service and advocacy

In a presentation during the Rotary Club of Saipan’s weekly meeting yesterday at the Crowne Plaza Resort Saipan in Garapan, guest speakers from the Northern Marianas Protection and Advocacy Systems Inc. shared that NMPASI will not only be moving to a new location in the coming days, but they will also be celebrating 30 years of service in the CNMI on Sept. 30, 2023.

The celebration will take place on the anniversary night itself at the Crowne Plaza from 6pm to 10pm and will be a night filled with fun trivia questions, food, and raffle prizes. The public is invited to participate and dinner is included with the entry tickets, which is currently on sale for $50. All extra proceeds will go toward NMPASI’s matching local share of grants for advocacy services.

NMPASI executive director Greg Borja said their upcoming anniversary celebration provides a forum to further the non-profit’s advocacy.

“We wanted to create an outreach opportunity for us to provide information to our community and we wanted to do it in a fun way so were doing it through a trivia night, so a majority of the questions through the trivia categories will relate to people with disabilities. There’s one category that’s completely about disability laws and there’s a number of laws out there locally and federally, so it’s just a creative way to get the information out to the community in a fun manner.”

He said any extra money that NMPSI earns from the event will help with their operating expenses “because we are restricted, because of the use of federal programs in terms of what we can or cannot use our funding on.”

With NMPASI helping to ensure CNMI residents with disabilities are treated fairly in the community, there’s been a dramatic improvement since they started their advocacy in 1993.

Borja shared that as of March 22, 2023 they have served close to 100 people, in different areas and situations such as education, employment, discrimination, abuse and neglect, healthcare issues, access to government benefit, financial exploitation, and transportation.

Borja said of NMPASI’s 30 years of existence, he’s been involved in 21 of them and expressed that it’s wonderful to see how far NMPASI has come so far.

“I think it’s really great. Some of the cases we get involved in really have an impact on the community. Some of the work that we do with the Department of Corrections over the years has caught the attention of groups such as the United States Civil Rights Commission. They held an event a couple of weeks ago to address some of the concerns in providing quality health care within the correctional institution. It really opens up opportunities for people to be able to get access to the kind of care and treatment they need.”

Borja said that along with celebrating 30 years, the NMPASI team will also be relocating headquarters to the Marianas Business Plaza in the upcoming days.

“We have been at our current location for about 16 years and it’s a great place. We just need a little bit more parking space so we’re moving to the Marianas Business Plaza in Room 505. The facility is accessible to people with mobility impairment and there are elevators and they do have accessible restrooms so it’s an ideal location for us to move to.”