Gabriela McCall Delgado - Special Needs EssentialsMeet Gabriela McCall Delgado:

As a college student with learning disabilities and ADD, Gabriela McCall Delgado saw a need to help more students like herself connect with one another about issues regarding high school, higher education, and employment. It all started when she was looking for information regarding accommodations that colleges and universities may have had available for students with disabilities.

Realizing that there was no comprehensive place to obtain this kind of information, Delgado began brainstorming on how to change that when she was only in high school. She had the idea of a centralized place to direct people to individual websites with particular information for special needs populations.

We Connect Now:

In 2008, Delgado would conceive a solution to the problem and become a social activist right after heading to college at Juniata College of Environmental Science in Huntingdon, Penn. As a freshman, she received enough grant money (from Young People For) to fund a website and launch We Connect Now, a platform that helps students with disabilities engage with one another, empowering them for a life of success. It informs protected students looking into going to colleges and universities as regular degree seeking students on accommodations and the rights under existing law.

After a year, Delgado decided she wanted to attend a larger university, so she enrolled in her father’s former school, Louisiana State University. As a Philosophy major with a concentration in Religious Studies, the busy student still somehow managed to maintain We Connect Now website, that has now reached people in over 171 countries.

One day at a time:

Hailing from Puerto Rico, Delgado devotes much of her time to growing her business, but she doesn’t stop there. When she’s not busy bringing people together through We Connect Now, she’s working with women who have been victims of domestic violence. For Delgado, it’s all about improving the quality of the world we live in in any way she can, one day at a time.