Mission Mountain Empowerment, a non-profit agency for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, is celebrating 50 years with a community party at their location on Polson Hill.  

MME will host the celebration on Sept. 19 at 5 p.m. with live music, a hog roast and a silent auction to commemorate 50 years of serving clients in the Mission Valley. Executive director Lauren Oliver explained this event will offer an opportunity for the community to meet MME’s supporters and board members, as well as encouraging their clients be part of the community.  

“We wanted to provide an event that is community friendly as a celebration, rather than just some kind of stiff party," she said. "Everything will be donation based. We'll feed you, we'll entertain, and you’ll get to meet our clients.”  

Oliver started at MME during the heart of the pandemic and since then she has helped the organization move its headquarters from downtown Ronan to their current location on Polson Hill and helped create new paths for the organization’s clients to experience life beyond Lake County.  

MME moved to its new location on a 12-acre property in 2023 and Oliver said she hopes to foster a “campus feel.” Recently they have been working on a trail around the property and plan to add compacted gravel soon.  

“We have plans in the works to put a pickleball court with a half-court basketball as well on there and really just use this property to provide a place for our clients to hang out,” Oliver said. “But also, for community events and community members to learn about what we do.”  

Along with changes around the property, the staff has been changing the lives of MME’s clients by creating a recreation program that provides clients with the opportunity to take vacations, learn how to snowboard and take chances on things like roller blades.  

“I very much believe in interventions of keeping people busy and as independent as possible,” Oliver said. She believes clients should have “opportunities like everyone else.”   

Oliver explained when people are out of their environment, they learn adversity and how to be better people. She advocates for MME’s clients to step out of not only Lake County but even Montana. One client has a trip planned to Dublin this year and a handful are heading to Cancun next year.  

Oliver has also restructured the organization to include a medical department and is adding more staff to their behavioral services department. She said this will allow them to treat people from a clinical background which is something she believes MME was lacking before.  

Oliver said they are currently looking at some properties to possibly build an apartment complex. These new homes will be different from the standard six people per house, Oliver said, because she has decided not to have more than four people per home.  

“It's not only better for your staffing, but it gives that more person-centered approach,” Oliver said.  

A grassroots effort 

Brodie Moll, who was in the field of disability services for about 50 years and served as the executive director at MME for 28 of those, says the organization evolved from grassroots efforts to care for and expand the horizons of people with intellectual disabilities. A committed cadre of parents, board members and staff helped expand MME from its humble beginnings in 1975.  

He explains that over the past five decades, a lot of societal and governmental changes have happened around caring for people with disabilities.  

“In this state, there were some real problems. There were a lot of state institutions,” said Moll, whose first job was at a state institution in Illinois in the early 1970s. “They were all overcrowded, the conditions were horrible. People were kind of warehoused in those places.” 

A nationwide movement to shift people from institutions and into community living situations was fueled by the recognition that intellectually disabled people also deserved civil rights. There was a significant effort to put people – instead of their disabilities – first, which led to the creation of supported independent living as well as communal living in group homes, such as those that MME developed. 

With these changes came another big shift toward community integration and providing people with services that included employment, transportation, vocational training and community living skills.  

“We took people out of institutions and nursing homes who were sometimes aggressive or very fragile,” Moll said. “We had an open door. We took on a lot of challenges.”  

“It was that idea of just being inclusive and integrating people into the community and building support,” Moll said.  

It’s a legacy well worth celebrating, and the community is welcome to join in at next Friday’s party. MME is located at 35647 S. Hills Dr., just south of Polson.