One of my Gold Award Smart goals is having 2 disability awareness events during the school year. My first awareness event was the Special Pops tennis tournament on October 24 at Lifetime Tennis in Peachtree Corners. Covid-19 made it difficult to find opportunities for students from my school to interact with people with Down Syndrome. I was able to find an organization called Special Pops (Special Populations) that works with people of all ages with intellectual disabilities through tennis. I met with the director and he indicated that he wanted to hold a tennis tournament but needed approximately 50 volunteers to make it happen. This event would make it possible for many students at my school to get involved with the athletes and raise awareness. Our school club, Play Unified, decided to partner with Special Pops to help recruit the needed volunteers. We helped with publicity and got many students from school to volunteer to help with the tournament. Special Pops was able to find enough volunteers to move forward with the event! I organized a training session in September so that the volunteers from my school could learn about their role as a unified tennis partner. The training was very helpful because many of the students that volunteered had not interacted with people with Down Syndrome. The director from Special Pops held the training for us. Our main role as a unified partner was to keep the athlete engaged in their match, make sure they have a positive experience, and follow Covid-19 protocols. The tournament was held on Saturday, October 24 and it was very successful! The comments below are from the director of Special Pops (Mr. Hamm) and the Play Unified club advisor (Ms. Ellis). I know that the students from my school had a great time and learned a lot about the challenges that people with disabilities face every day. The students from my school had a great time and want to participate again! I am taking a survey of the students involved to get some feedback about the event. Here are the comments from Ms. Lina Ellis, the Play Unified faculty advisor at my school and Mr. Jim Hamm, the Director of Special Pops:
"Kara has done a great job spreading the word about Special Pops and also recruiting volunteers. Thank you for providing such awesome training for our Westminster students too! It was a great day yesterday! I am so glad the weather cooperated! Looking forward to partnering with Special Pops in the future!" Lina
"Thank you very much for the excellent job you did in coordinating the communications and recruitment of players from Westminster. I heard many great things about the quality of play of the group in support of their athlete and the opposing athlete as well. I hope this was a favorable experience for the entire group. We will be starting back in late February or early March with our training for what hopefully will be the Special Olympics Georgia Summer Games. This event is usually in late May.
Keep in touch and we look forward to the next time we see the Unified Play club in action. If writing a letter to your school administrators or other club members, would be helpful let me know and I will make that happen.
All the best and know that you may reach out to me at any point that you feel necessary.
GREAT JOB!!!"
Jim
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Step Up For Disabilities
RandomI will be updating my progress during my Gold Award Project!
