Center for Independent Living

Centers for Independent Living (CILs) are community-based organizations that support people with disabilities in achieving greater independence and improving their quality of life. As Middle Tennessee’s Center for Independent Living, we offer the following core services:

• Information and Referral – Let us share resources and help connect you with agencies who may be able to help.

• Peer Support – Let us connect you with others to share the wisdom and humor about all subjects related to living and thriving with a disability. Community and friendship help make all things possible!

• Advocacy - Let us help you learn how to speak up for yourself and others, and champion the disability issues that are most important to you.

• Employment Readiness and Skills Training – Let us help you learn about your ability to put your best foot forward and represent yourself in a positive light so that potential employers will see your gifts.

• Transition Services – Let us help make your big life changes, from high school to postsecondary life and from institutions to community life a little smoother.

Access Music City

Empower Tennessee believes that all individuals, regardless of their abilities, should have equal access to our community’s varied and various offerings. In addition to our Center for Independent Living Core Services, we work with members of our community, partner organizations, and businesses across Middle Tennessee to increase access and inclusion to all the places people live, work, and play. Some of the ways we make Nashville more accessible include:

• ADA Consultations and Blue Path Assessments — Invite us to assess how accessible your favorite Music City venue, restaurant, or business is. We are happy to help your business identify and remove barriers to your establishment being accessible and welcoming to all customers, regardless of their abilities.

• Braille Transcription Services — Work with us to have your documents — such as menus, agendas, gallery guides, magazines, and other publications — transcribed into Braille so that individuals with low or no vision can fully engage with your services and resources and communicate their desires independently.

• Access Music City Evenings — Invite us to partner with you to create events that create community, connection, inspiration, and fun, where inclusion is a given.

Our Mission

To empower people with disabilities with opportunities for inclusion, choice, and independence

Our Vision

A community where people with disabilities are valued equally and participate fully

Our Values

• Empowerment — increasing one’s ability to work towards a desired quality of life

• Fairness — working toward a level playing field for people of all abilities and lifestyles

• Partnership — working in collaboration toward a common goal

• Accountability — accepting responsibility with integrity and transparency 

• Sustainability — building programs, activities, and processes to last 

• Knowledge — understanding through learned facts and lived experience

• Intersectionality — welcoming and recognizing individuals and communities that hold multiple identities

Independent Living Philosophy

Independent living is not just a program offered by Empower Tennessee. It is a way of looking at disability and society, and a worldwide movement of people with disabilities working for self-determination, self-respect and equal opportunities. We operate according to a strict philosophy of consumer control, wherein people with all types of disabilities directly govern and staff the organization.