Children Archives - Read. Think. Act.

Kids Enjoy Exercise Now (KEEN) of Greater Washington

(Oct. 24, 2018) Catherine Read sits down with Barbara Guterman, Board Member of Kids Enjoy Exercise Now (KEEN). KEEN’s mission is to empower youth with disabilities by providing free, non-competitive, one to one programs of exercise, fitness and fun led by volunteer coaches. Their vision is to foster self confidence, self esteem and community inclusion for youth with disabilities, strengthen communities through education and volunteers, and provide families with respite and a supportive network.

Elliot Portnoy, who imported the concept of the organization from England 26 years ago, established KEEN with 5 kids and 5 volunteers. His vision was to have a world where all youth have equal opportunities for recreation, fitness and friendship – regardless of their abilities. KEEN believes that a strong, healthy body and mind are connected to one another, and KEEN gives kids of all abilities a safe place to explore, try new things and have fun at the same time.

The organization has grown exponentially since 1992, and now serves approximately 500 kids throughout the Washington metro area. KEEN recently opened up new locations in Virginia, and is actively looking for more opportunities to grow their partnerships in the Virginia suburbs. They are in search of schools, community centers and companies who can help them grow their programming and volunteer base in order to serve more children.

Guterman speaks passionately about the strong bonds and friendships formed between the volunteer coaches and the athletes who they train. The unique aspect of having 1:1 ratio enables these bonds to grow deep and strong. They get to know one another, and very much look forward to the time that they spend together every week. This program also serves as a wonderful respite for parents, who sometimes just need a break to grocery shop or rest with a cup of coffee, while their child gets worn out while exercising. Many times these children might not have any other opportunity to participate in an extracurricular exercise program, so both parents and kids very much look forward to the weekly KEEN sessions.

The KEEN website has a full calendar of sessions, so parents can simply signup online to bring their child to a session. There is no cost involved in this program. Likewise, anyone looking to volunteer can register online, and then get paired with a local session. All first time volunteers get a 15-20 introductory training, as well as receiving a written profile of your athlete. This helps you understand your athlete and how to best work with them.

Guterman is the chair of the annual KEENFest gala, to be held on November 3^rd at the Capital Hilton in Washington, DC. This year’s theme is KEEN’s Got Talent, and will showcase a number of their athletes who will perform everything from singing to dancing to a fashion show. The kids are extremely excited to participate in the program and showcase their talents. She is expecting over 400 people, and is extraordinarily grateful to their sponsors Marriott and Total Wine. Gutenberg welcomes anyone who would like to join them for this special evening or sponsor the program. Tickets and sponsorship opportunities can be found on the website.

by Rachel Simon

Optimist Club of Greater Vienna with Susan Bauer

(Oct. 17, 2018) Catherine Read sits down with Susan Bauer, President of the Optimist Club of Greater Vienna. The Optimist Club is a community service club, fueled by volunteers who dedicate their time and energy to serve the youth of the greater Vienna area. The club focuses its attention on students attending James Madison, Marshall and Oakton High Schools, and the feeder schools in their pyramids. Founded in 1955, the club is 63 years young and continues to focus on its mission of “bringing out the best in youth, the community and ourselves”.

JOI (Junior Optimist International) clubs in the local schools enjoy healthy memberships and robust programming. These community service school groups, ranging from elementary to high school, organize service projects that are completely run by the students. Typical projects include coat drives, food drives and a variety of projects outside the schools within the greater Vienna community. At the end of every year, these groups come together and make presentations on their accomplishments. This is a wonderful opportunity for groups to learn about success stories, and has led to collaboration between student groups at various schools and age groups.

Throughout the year, the Optimists sponsor and participate in a variety of community service events. One of the largest events each year is the sponsorship and participation in Ethics Day at Marshall High School. Volunteers work as table captains and support high school students in understanding the importance of ethics in their day-to-day lives. They also sponsor an oratory contest for students, an essay contest, and new this year a communications contest for the deaf and hard of hearing. All of these events are designed to help students learn and grow, as well as give them confidence. The winners of these local events then advance to compete at the district level.

The club also gives scholarships and youth appreciation awards to students in a variety of categories. Students are recognized for academic achievement, citizenship, fine arts, athletics and technology. Vocational students who excel in areas such as automotive repair, plumbing and electrical are also recognized. They have recently added an award for a student in the Special Education program. A full list of scholarship opportunities are listed on the organization’s website. The Optimists also recognize citizens who give back to their community, with the Partners in Education, Respect for the Law and First Responder awards.

The Optimist Club focuses on bringing out the best in the youth of their community, so you will see them out in the community in a variety of places. In just over a week the club will be present in support of the Vienna Halloween parade, where they provide a number of volunteers to help facilitate the event and donate funding on an annual basis. The club also maintains the Vienna Caboose by giving tours and handling the maintenance. Recently the caboose needed both interior and exterior painting, and the club is supporting the town by taking care of these needs.

In order to support all of their ambitious activities the club has several fundraisers throughout the year. They sell beer and wine at the Chilling on Church summer block party, they are responsible for organizing and renting space for the Vienna Farmer’s Market, and during the holidays, the club sells Christmas trees from the parking lot of the Vienna Giant grocery store. Bauer truly enjoys this project, as it brings together club members, along with students who participate in the youth led JOI clubs, and members of many local sports teams to help man the sales booth. In addition to raising money for their efforts, the Christmas tree sales is a wonderful community building opportunity.

by Rachel Simon

Krista Gauthier – Sliding Doors Squared

(July 18, 2018) Catherine Read speaks with Krista Gauthier who is the founder of Sliding Doors Squared, an enrichment program for children with dyslexia. Studies have shown that children with dyslexia excel in STEM related curriculum and careers, so Gathier’s program focuses on reading tutoring and STEM enrichment to help these students excel. Unfortunately, many dyslexic students go undiagnosed, and because they have a barrier to learning how to read they are not encouraged to explore and engage with other content. Sliding Doors Squared is designed to help these students realize their potential.

Gauthier has a background in teaching, so when her daughter was diagnosed with dyslexia she was thrown into a whole new world in the education subculture. She quickly learned that there are not many resources for parents of children who have dyslexia. If a child is diagnosed, it is very expensive to seek the necessary early intervention to keep students on track. One year ago, Gauthier embarked on a journey to bring much needed resources to the community. Together with her daughter’s reading tutor Joyce Maryanopolis, they founded Sliding Doors Squared (SD2). This program is currently offered at St. Bernadette Catholic School in Springfield as an after-school program, and they are looking to expand to another location in the Reston/Herndon area this year.

Gauthier shares that 15-20% of the general population live with dyslexia, and 30-40% of engineers and scientists are dyslexic. She also notes that 48% of the prison population is identified as dyslexic. She believes if students are identified early and taught how to read in a way that their brain can process properly, then the students can move on and excel in school. The STEM aspect of the Sliding Doors program is designed to introduce kids to subjects like robotics and engineering. It also includes opportunities to meet area scientists on their monthly Science Saturdays field trips, many who have dyslexia themselves. This allows the students to see themselves in their role models, and understand first hand that they can achieve and succeed despite their challenges.

Most of the people who run the programming with Sliding Doors are volunteers. They must be trained in the evidence-based reading curriculum, and commit to a 2 year program with their students. Many of the volunteers are teachers themselves, who benefit from understanding how dyslexic children learn, which can improve how they approach student with similar challenges in their own classrooms.

Another key element of the Sliding Doors program includes networking opportunities for parents. As a parent herself, Gauthier realized how few opportunities there were to meet and speak with other parents, along with how difficult it was to seek out resources. As part of the Science Saturday programming, Sliding Doors often offers programming geared towards parents where they can attend workshops, learn about advocacy, or listen to speakers who can help them learn about how to best support their children.

by Rachel Simon

The Phillips Programs – Debbie Alexander

(June 14, 2018) Catherine Read interviews Debbie Alexander, Director of Development for The Phillips Programs. For the past 50 years Phillips has served the needs of individuals with emotional and behavioral problems and their families through education, family support services, community education and advocacy. Phillips is a private non-profit organization that serves the needs of over 500 children and their families in the Washington, DC area across four campuses in Virginia and Maryland. They strive to help children where others could not, by individualizing a plan for each student so they can become independent, young adults.

Alexander shares that children are referred to their program when they are unable to thrive in their school environment. There is no typical profile for a Phillips student, but many have experienced trauma in one form or another. Perhaps they have difficulty communicating or engaging with other students or their teachers, and because of this the student acts out or misbehaves which interferes with the learning cycle. At Phillips, the educators and therapists develop a wholly personalized plan for learning that addresses the obstacles each student faces, and comes up with a plan to overcome the obstacles. With small class sizes of 9 students per classroom, this becomes a realistic goal. Additionally, Phillips runs programs to encourage families to stay together, as the stress of a child with disabilities can often tear families apart. Phillips offers home and community based counseling, behavior consultation and family support.

As the organization has evolved over the past 50 years, Phillips has taken on the role of not only educating their students, but also preparing the students for a world where they can work and become independent. The Career Partners Program was implemented two years ago, and is now thriving. Phillips established a culinary program which includes a commercial kitchen and a vertical garden at their Laurel location, a 3-D design and print program at their Annandale location, and a building trades program at the Fairfax school. The concept is that they are giving their students marketable skills in order to enter the workforce. Alexander specifically highlighted the building trades program, where students just completed their first home that they designed and built all on their own. The home sold for $585,000 and took four years to complete.

As she mentioned earlier in the interview, there is no “typical” student in the Phillips program. Students are generally referred to Phillips by the public school system, if the student struggles to thrive in a mainstream environment. Access to information and resources can be difficult to come by for parents who are looking for help, so the Phillips Program is re-vamping their website to include more information and become more accessible to parents.

The main message that Alexander wants to share is that the Phillips Program gives hope to children and families, while focusing on the children’s abilities and highlighting their strengths. For example, the 3-D printing program, which operates as a partner of the Youthquest Foundation, is a great fit for students with autism. This type of work is ideally suited for people on the autism spectrum because it includes a number of repetitive tasks. The Youthquest representatives noted that the Phillips students produced the most sophisticated and complex work on the 3-D printer that they had seen to date.

The Phillips program is a non-profit and operates on the donations of its generous benefactors. Each April they hold a gala, and in May they organize a 5K run. Alexander encourages those in the community to support this valuable asset in the community. You can donate online to support some of the most vulnerable children in our community and give them a chance to thrive and grow up to be independent members of society.

by Rachel Simon

The Pajama Program – Karen Duffy, Virginia Chapter President

(June 3, 2016) Catherine Read, host of Kitchen Table Conversations, sits down with Karen Duffy, who runs the Virginia Chapter of the Pajama Program. This program ensures that all children, no matter where they are living or what their income level, have a cozy set of pajamas and a book to read before they go to bed. Their goal is to ensure that children experience a good night sleep, and awaken with the spirit and energy to make every day positive, happy and hopeful. They accomplish this with the magical gift of a new set of pajamas and a book, ordinary objects that transform their bedtimes into comforting rituals of love, support and fun.

The Pajama Program was established back in 2001, and has grown to have chapters in all 50 states. Duffy is an Kindergarten school teacher, who organized drives for the Virginia chapter each year at her elementary school. When she learned that the Virginia chapter head was stepping down, she decided to step up, and now she coordinates the statewide effort to help connect volunteers with over 90 receiving organizations. Organizations who accept donations include homeless shelters (such as Shelter House), domestic abuse shelters, group homes (orphanages), and at-risk children who are identified through the hospital.

The Pajama Program has established a Good Night Bill of Rights, a doctrine that helps guide the organization, and helps remind them of what is important in their mission and in a child’s day. Its five simple principals help the Pajama Program and communities everywhere, to deliver a loving bedtime and quality night’s sleep to children everywhere. The five points are:

Every child has the right to a sense of stability and security.
Every child has the right to feel loved and cared for at bedtime.
Every child has the right to wear fresh, clean pajamas to bed, and to enjoy a bedtime story that fires their imagination.
Every child has the right to feel valued and validated as a human being.
Every child has the right to a good night, and a good day.

Duffy points out that although it is more fun to buy pajamas and books for young children, kids of all ages are in need of these items. One suggestion she had when running a donation drive, is to have kids bring in pajamas and books for kids their own age. She hopes that organizations like scouts, school groups, businesses and places of worship will learn about the Pajama Program and choose to plan a donation drive. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of children who can use a fresh set of pajamas and a new book.

To find out how you can volunteer for distribution days, organize a pajama/book drive, or suggest an organization that would benefit from the Pajama Program, email Karen at [email protected]