My gold award project includes 2 holding two disability awareness events during the school year. COVID-19 has made it difficult to find organizations with programming this year, but I was able to find an organization called Special Pops that works with people of all ages with intellectual disabilities through tennis. They would like to hold a 1 day tennis tournament on October 24 but they need around 50 volunteers to make it happen. The volunteers would need to serve as doubles partners, ballpersons, umpires, etc. on the day of the tournament. This event would be a great way for Play Unified members and other students at my school to get involved, so Play Unified has agreed to partner with their organization for this event. Working-one-on-one with the Special Pops athletes will be a great way for students to gain awareness and understanding about people with disabilities. I set up and led a Play Unified club zoom meeting and had their Executive Director, Mr. Hamm, speak about the Special Pops athletes, the October event and their volunteer needs. My club advisor, Ms. Ellis, also attended. For students that want to serve as tennis partners, I am setting up separate training sessions so that they will understand their role as a unified partner (and all of the safety protocols because of COVID). I know that working with this organization will help bring awareness to my school community so I am super excited about it. Many thanks to my club advisor Ms. Ellis and Mr. Hamm at Special Pops for their support!
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
