Mobility International USA

People with disabilities contact MIUSA's National Clearinghouse on Disability and Exchange to navigate study-abroad programs, volunteer placements, and international exchanges that were never designed with them in mind.

ENABLE Model location

• Builder-side Interventions → Set Requirements that Include Accessibility
• Builder-side Interventions → Create Accessible Content

What it is

Mobility International USA (MIUSA, pronounced "my-YOU-suh") is a disability-led nonprofit co-founded in 1981 by Susan Sygall and Barbara Williams, headquartered in Eugene, Oregon. Its mission is to empower people with disabilities to achieve their human rights through international exchange and international development.¹

MIUSA operates several interconnected programs:

• National Clearinghouse on Disability and Exchange (NCDE): A project of the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, launched in 1995, to increase the participation of people with disabilities in international exchange. NCDE provides free advising, tip sheets, best practices, sample forms, webinars, and technical assistance to both disabled travelers and exchange professionals. Its resource library spans topics from disability accommodations (210+ resources) and cultural adjustment (100+) to air travel, housing, funding, and visa guidance.^{2 3}

• Women's Institute on Leadership and Disability (WILD): A signature leadership training program for women with disabilities from around the world. WILD has trained participants from dozens of countries at the grassroots level, with alumni going on to found organizations, win elected office, and lead disability-inclusive peacebuilding efforts in places like South Sudan, Panama, Jordan, and Indonesia.⁴

• Excellence in Development and Disability Inclusion (EDDI): A membership initiative through which international development organizations receive training, individualized advising, and referrals to ensure their programs actively reach people with disabilities.⁵

• Global Disability Rights Now!: An award-winning website providing information, tools, and best practices for implementing and enforcing disability rights laws and policies worldwide.⁵

MIUSA has produced over 2,400 alumni across 136+ countries. The organization also teaches a university course, Global Perspectives on Disability, at the University of Oregon, and provides in-depth consulting for organizations including the U.S. Institute of Peace and Lever for Change.^{4 5}

Why it matters

International exchange programs -- study abroad, Fulbright, Peace Corps, volunteer placements -- are transformative experiences, but their requirement-setting almost never accounts for disability. Application forms don't ask about access needs. Partner institutions have no obligation to provide accommodations. Housing is assumed to be ambulatory. Insurance policies exclude pre-existing conditions. The result: disabled people are informally screened out of opportunities their non-disabled peers take for granted.

MIUSA's intervention operates upstream. Through NCDE, exchange professionals receive training on how to recruit disabled participants, make applications accessible, negotiate accommodations with partner schools, and structure programs so that disability is planned for rather than reacted to. This is builder-side content work -- creating the tip sheets, best practices, and curricula that fill a gap left by exchange organizations that never wrote accessibility into their programs.

When that upstream care is absent -- when a Fulbright office has no guidance on wheelchair-accessible housing in a host country, or a study-abroad coordinator has never advised a Deaf student -- the burden falls on the disabled traveler to figure it out alone. MIUSA's NCDE functions as both a builder-side intervention (training the professionals) and a lifeline for navigators who would otherwise face abandonment: "People with disabilities can and should participate in the transformative experience of international exchange. Sometimes it requires encouragement and creativity to address barriers to make that possible."²

Real-world examples

In the news

Building Community at the WILD-Indonesia Training (February 2026)
-- MIUSA

• WILD alumna Aisyah Ardani organized a three-day training in Indonesia for 24 women with diverse disabilities, demonstrating how MIUSA's builder-side requirement-setting cascades: the program trains leaders who then train others, extending disability rights infrastructure into countries where it barely exists.

In the news

Alumni Spotlight: Caroline Atim, South Sudan (2025)
-- MIUSA

• 2012 WILD alumna Caroline Atim became a leading voice for disability-inclusive peacebuilding in South Sudan -- a country where peace processes rarely include disabled people. Her leadership illustrates what happens when requirement-setting extends beyond technology into policy and diplomacy.

• The NCDE resource library contains 210+ resources on disability accommodations, 100+ on cultural adjustment, 98 on disclosure and advocacy, and 84 on career development -- all freely available to exchange professionals and students.³
• MIUSA alumni include Asia Yaghi, a WILD graduate who became a member of Parliament in Jordan, and Marissa Martinez, who founded Panama's first organization for women with disabilities.⁴
• MIUSA's exchange professionals page provides "Professional Pathways" -- online learning modules specifically for international educators who have never advised a disabled student.³
• The organization has consulted for the U.S. Institute of Peace on disability-inclusive peacebuilding and for Namati on disability rights enforcement.⁵
• In Kenya, MIUSA supported the development of sign language interpreter standards; in Nepal, disability policy enforcement; in Armenia, independent living center development.⁵

What care sounds like (builder-side interventions)

Care at requirement-setting involves ensuring disability inclusion is built into exchange programs from the outset:

• "We ask about access needs on the application, not as an afterthought -- it's part of the intake process."
• "Before we finalize a partner institution, we verify wheelchair accessibility, sign language interpreter availability, and emergency procedures."
• "We trained our advisors using NCDE's Professional Pathways modules so they don't panic when a Deaf student applies."
• "Our program budget includes a line item for disability accommodations -- we don't make students request exceptions."

What neglect sounds like (builder-side interventions)

Neglect involves treating disability as an edge case that exchange programs aren't equipped to handle:

• "We've never had a student with a disability apply, so we don't have a process for that."
• "The partner university says their campus isn't accessible -- we can't change that."
• "We'd love to include disabled students, but our insurance doesn't cover pre-existing conditions."
• "Accommodations abroad are the student's responsibility -- we provide the program, not the access."
• "We don't ask about disability on the application because we don't want to discriminate."

What compensation sounds like (navigator-side compensations)

Compensation describes the labor disabled people carry when international exchange programs aren't designed for them:

• "I called MIUSA because my study-abroad office had no idea how to help me find accessible housing in Senegal."
• "I had to research every country's accessibility laws myself before I could even narrow down my program list."
• "The application didn't mention disability at all, so I had to decide whether to disclose and risk being rejected, or stay quiet and arrive without accommodations."
• "I trained my own host family on how to assist me -- the program provided no guidance."
• "I almost didn't go abroad because no one at my university could tell me if my wheelchair would work on the streets there."

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All observations occur within the context of disability-inclusive international exchange and development, centered on MIUSA's programs operating from Eugene, Oregon, and extending to 136+ countries worldwide.

Footnotes

1. https://miusa.org/about "About MIUSA — Mobility International USA" ↩

2. https://miusa.org/ncde/ "National Clearinghouse on Disability and Exchange — MIUSA" ↩ ↩²

3. https://miusa.org/exchange-professionals/ "Exchange Professionals — NCDE / MIUSA" ↩ ↩² ↩³

4. https://miusa.org/impact/ "Impact — Mobility International USA" ↩ ↩² ↩³

5. https://miusa.org/our-work/ "Our Work — Mobility International USA" ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵