Earlier this year, OAR set outreach goals for the month of April to spread awareness, take action, and increase acceptance of persons with autism. As of the end of Autism Awareness Month, this is what we accomplished with your help.
OAR’s goal for April was to provide peer education materials through the Kit for Kids program and the new Autism Tuned In program to 9,000 general education students in grades K-8. By the end of April, the program had reached over 9,300 additional students, bringing the total number of students impacted by the Kit for Kids to over 99,000.
This April, over 40 additional educators signed up for Autism Tuned In, an online variant of the Kit for Kids, to engage their students in autism acceptance through the “What’s Up with Nick?” story. The website tells the story through animated videos and fun activities.
OAR planned to distribute 5,500 “Life Journey Through Autism” guides to families, schools, conferences, police and fire stations, and lending libraries. In doing so, OAR hoped to offer tools, lessons, and advice on how to meet the needs of persons with autism. By the end of April, OAR had nearly doubled that goal, distributing 9,483 guidebooks to the autism community.
Of those 9,483 resources, 1,807 copies of “A Guide to Safety” were delivered to the community, far exceeding OAR’s goal of 1,000. This resource identifies the major safety threats for individuals on the spectrum during childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Its main focus, however, is to help parents understand what they can do to plan for threats, prevent them from occurring, and manage them if things go wrong.
Autism Awareness Month is over, but OAR’s resources are still available to download or order.
Being a sibling has its highs and lows, on or off the autism spectrum. For autism siblings, however, there are a few unique challenges. OAR provides three sibling guidebooks, each aimed towards meeting the specific needs and concerns of young children, teens, and caregivers.
This April, OAR aimed to deliver 1,800 copies of those guides, “Life as an Autism Sibling: A Guide for Teens,” “Autism, My Sibling, and Me,” and “Brothers, Sisters, and Autism: A Parent’s Guide.” OAR distributed over 2,400 sibling guides by the end of April, including at sibshops and conferences all over the United States.
If you don’t have them already, you can download or order your own copies:
OAR’s pilot of its Hire Autism website is continuing in Northern Virginia. For job seekers with autism, the site offers job postings and employment-related support resources. Businesses can post jobs and view information about autism, workplace accommodations, and more on the site. After being hired, individuals can still look to Hire Autism for tips on how to be effective workers and maintain their jobs long term.
OAR’s April goal was to help five more applicants find employment and increase the number of applicants by 50 percent. By the end of the month, four applicants were able to find jobs through Hire Autism in April, and 20 new job seekers joined the site.
If you know of any businesses in the Northern Virginia area that may be interested in Hire Autism, give them our informational brochure. If you are currently seeking employment in the area, you can register as a user at any time. To learn more about how you can get involved or to request brochures and other Hire Autism promotional material to share, contact info@hireautism.org.
This year the RUN FOR AUTISM partnered with endurance events all over the country as well as a few international events and added eight new events to our race calendar, making it one of the largest in OAR history.
Earlier this year, the RUN FOR AUTISM team set a goal of raising $15,000 through our DIY Athletic Events programs. Because this goal was already close to being met by the start of April, OAR decided to set a new goal of raising $100,000 during the month of April through the RUN program. We continued to recruit RUN FOR AUTISM teams in the Bank of America Chicago Marathon, Marine Corps Marathon, TCS New York City Marathon, and multiple triathlon events. During Autism Awareness Month, the RUN program raised $97,171, exceeding last April’s fundraising by $47,000. All funds raised go towards supporting research grants and distributing resources.
The success OAR experienced in working with the public to spread the word about Hire Autism, educating the next generation, distributing resources, and fundraising reveals the importance of connecting and collaborating with as many members of the autism community as possible. OAR plans to continue to reach out to new people and organizations to develop our ongoing initiatives.
If you are looking to stay involved in any of the above initiatives, contact OAR at 703-243-9710 or programs@researchautism.org.
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