Providence Woman Featured In "Intelligent Lives," New Documentary Film On Inclusion

By Gina Macris

“Intelligent Lives,” a new documentary film, profiles Rhode Islander Naomie Monplaisir and two other adults with intellectual disabilities whose personal stories defy conventional assumptions and help the filmmaker deliver a strong rebuke of standard IQ testing.

Naomie Monplaisir Photo courtesy of Dan Habib

The Rhode Island premiere of the film will be free and open to the public at Rhode Island College on Thursday, Oct. 11, at 5:30 p.m., with the filmmaker, New Hampshire-based Dan Habib, leading a panel discussion after the screening.

Academy Award-winning actor Chris Cooper narrates the documentary, which, in addition to Monplaisir, profiles a Massachusetts high school student making the transition to adulthood and a man who works as a teaching assistant at Syracuse University.

Monplaisir, now 27, changed course in her life because of the landmark Olmstead consent decree in Rhode Island, the first settlement in the nation which enforces the integration mandate of the Americans With Disabilities Act specifically for daytime services for adults with developmental disabilities.

For Monplaisir, a Providence resident who enjoys singing and dancing at her Haitian Creole church, the 2014 federal consent decree has meant a chance to pursue the job of her dreams rather than being shunted off to a sheltered workshop after high school.

Monplaisir will participate in the panel discussion after the screening, along with her brother, Steven Monplaisir, and Kiernan O’Donnell, Associate Director for Vocational Services at the John E. Fogarty Center of North Providence. The Fogarty Center has provided Monplaisir with supported employment services.

“People with intellectual disabilities are the most segregated of all Americans,” said Habib, who is affiliated with the Institute on Disability at the University of New Hampshire.

Nationally, he said, “only 17 percent of students with intellectual disabilities are included in regular education. Just 40 percent will graduate from high school. And of the 6.5 million Americans with an intellectual disability, barely 15 percent are employed.”

In Rhode Island, the percentage of adults with intellectual or developmental disabilities working in integrated settings was above average, at 27 percent last March, according to the latest Annual Day and Employment Survey of the Sherlock Center on Disabilities at Rhode Island College.

But that figure is dramatically below the general population’s participation rate in the national labor force, which was 68 percent last March, Habib said.

The screening, at the Nazarian Center for the Performing Arts in Sapinsley Hall, will be hosted by the Sherlock Center, which requests advance registrationfor those planning to attend. To register, go to http://www.ric.edu/sherlockcenter/ilevent.html