{"id":360106,"date":"2022-01-20T06:06:57","date_gmt":"2022-01-19T20:06:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=360106"},"modified":"2022-01-20T06:06:57","modified_gmt":"2022-01-19T20:06:57","slug":"gregory-p-borja-is-new-nmpasi-chief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/gregory-p-borja-is-new-nmpasi-chief\/","title":{"rendered":"Gregory P. Borja is new NMPASI chief"},"content":{"rendered":"

Assuming the role on Jan. 6 this year, Gregory P. Borja is Northern Marianas Protection & Advocacy Systems Inc.\u2019s new executive director.<\/p>\n

Borja, who was NMPASI\u2019s program manager before becoming its new chief, said yesterday that his past two week at the helm of NMPASI has been \u201cexciting\u201d and \u201cI\u2019m looking forward to continue moving forward with our staff here and the work that we do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before Borja became executive director, NMPASI was led by long-time executive director James Rayphand. <\/p>\n

\"\"
Borja<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

According to Borja, Rayphand started at NMPASI in 1996 as an advocate, a common starting point for many NMPASI staff. Rayphand worked his way up, became NMPASI\u2019s executive director in 2007, and served in the role for the next 15 years. For NMPASI as a whole, Borja said that Rayphand was a great leader. To him, Rayphand was a great mentor. <\/p>\n

\u201c[Rayphand] has provided great leadership in [helping us] move forward in terms of ensuring that we hold to our mission of protecting the civil, legal, and human rights of individuals with disabilities here in the CNMI. He\u2019s been a great mentor to me in terms of learning how to work with our federal programs and the grants that we receive in order to ensure that we\u2026don\u2019t quit service, even in times of typhoon or with the [ongoing COVID-19] pandemic,\u201d said Borja.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve always kept our doors open, because the population that we serve is a vulnerable population\u2014people with disabilities\u2014and so we want to ensure that there\u2019s no interruption in services for them and what they\u2019re trying to get in order to live free in the community,\u201d Borja added.<\/p>\n

As for what he would like to see happen at NMPASI with him as director, Borja said he wants to see NMPASI expand its programs, expand its funding opportunities, and see how NMPASI can continue to serve people with disabilities in the midst of a pandemic.<\/p>\n

Borja said that NMPASI currently operates through eight federal grants plus one sub-grant from the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. that supports NMPASI\u2019s efforts to help families of children who are deaf or hard of hearing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the pandemic, there\u2019s a lot of restrictions in terms of access to facilities, so I\u2019d like to see that we are able to continue to get into those facilities to help out people who might need our assistance,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

With him at the helm, Borja would also like to see more outreaches in line with the organization\u2019s mission to have an accessible community for people with mental or physical disabilities in the CNMI. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe long-run mission of NMPASI is to ensure that we have an accessible community for people with mental or physical disabilities. \u2026We want to make sure we get the\u2026appropriate outreach [out there] so that people know some of the issues that surround the lives of folks with disabilities, because at one time or another, we will all experience a disability. It\u2019s a natural part of the human experience,\u201d said Borja.<\/p>\n

According to its official website, NMPASI\u2019s priorities include providing \u201clegally-based advocacy services on behalf of individuals with disabilities and their families in the CNMI; advancing \u201cthe understanding of and appreciation for protection & advocacy services and disability-related issues in the CNMI\u201d; and enhancing \u201cthe quality of protection & advocacy services and the efficiency of the organization\u2019s operations.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Assuming the role on Jan. 6 this year, Gregory P. Borja is Northern Marianas Protection…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":360108,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1502],"class_list":["post-360106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","tag-nmpasi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360106\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}