Building Outreach Opportunities to Promote the Inclusion of People with Disabilities

Special Olympics members at the Basketball State Championship Tournament in 2020

Special Olympics members at the Basketball State Championship Tournament in 2020

For the past two and a half years I have been a part of the University of Washington Special Olympics chapter, a club dedicated to bringing awareness to the importance of inclusion of those with intellectual disabilities through competitive sports. Special Olympics creates a space for people to gain leadership opportunities, learn physical skills, and create social networks to build confidence in their abilities. Being part of an organization that provides tools for empowerment for underserved communities inspired me to push for greater change. To do this I joined the executive team, first as the VP of Programming, where I worked to a social community within the team, and now as the VP of Outreach, where I build engagement through social media, marketing, and collaborations with external organizations.

I have taken part in organizations that center around the inclusion of the disabled community since I was a junior in high school.  I have found a true sense of purpose by actively working towards the future of people who have disabilities. The friendships I have made in these clubs in high school and now in college have changed my outlook on life. It has made me realize the importance of friendship, the value of belonging, and the understanding that people with disabilities are capable of so many things. I want to help create a world where people with disabilities are celebrated and feel empowered. Through my experiences in Best Buddies and Special Olympics, I have found a motivation to dedicate my career to create tools for empowerment.

| Accomplishments

During my two years of leadership in Special Olympics I was able to accomplish many things.

VP of Programing (2019-2020): building internal community to strengthen team dynamic

●       Planned bonding events such as the end of the year party, bowling birthday celebration, and basketball game watch parties

VP of Outreach (2020-current): work to share Special Olympics’ mission to the external community to increase engagement

●        Designed club t-shirts

●       Created an interactive monthly bingo sheet

●       Constructed a promotional video for recruitment

●       Currently managing collaboration events with Best Buddies, a club with a similar purpose to Special Olympics

●       Currently planning a quarterly conference with other Special Olympics executive groups in the Washington area.

| Competencies Gained

Idea Generation

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Special Olympics club changed significantly. Most of the activities we did as a club were recreational sports which involved practicing together on a physical field however, we are no longer able to practice in person. The executive team spent a week creating a new plan for Special Olympics in a virtual space. During our meetings, I came up with the idea of virtual workouts and social games each week to keep our members active and engaged in the club, while being online. From that idea, I created a master document that contained the meeting schedule, a list of workout videos, and a list of virtual activities. I worked to create a list that contained different types of workouts, such as kickboxing, HITT, and yoga, to provide diversity in the workouts and to teach new ways of staying active. It has been almost a year since I first created the document, and we continue to use it as a reference to this day.

Example of monthly bingo cards I create in order to keep engagement in Special Olympics high outside of meeting hours.

Example of monthly bingo cards I create in order to keep engagement in Special Olympics high outside of meeting hours.

Inclusion

Special Olympics is all about building a space where everyone feels comfortable with their own abilities, and we work toward advocating for the inclusion of people with all types of disabilities. Specific ways that I helped create an inclusive environment within the club was creating workout plans based on everyone’s skill level. I created a survey to inform our virtual workout decisions based on space available to move, ability to do floor workouts, and appropriate length of workouts. The survey data allowed me to create a workout plan that included everyone’s special needs, such as standing exercises that do not need a lot of physical space, and activities with 30 minutes of workout and 30 minutes of social interaction which best suited the member’s physical abilities. Additionally, I created a monthly health and wellness bingo challenge to include members that could not make it to the weekly meetings to help them feel included. By getting direct feedback I was able to redesign our club’s program to be inclusive of every member’s needs.

Resiliency

When our club first turned virtual the executive team found it difficult to maintain engagement with some of our members. We recognized this change was due to the shift from competitive sports to virtual workouts, which to some people was not as appealing. Despite this setback, we worked hard to prepare for a new recruitment cycle. As we prepared, we experienced some difficulties in marketing; we created a poster to post in the residence halls, however, due to covid the halls were not accepting posters from RSOs and we could not display our poster. I overcame this challenge by creating a recruitment video that we posted on our social media pages and on the UW RSO page. In the video, I was able to express more about what our club does and our mission, which turned out to be more successful than just a poster. The video helped to increase our interest meeting attendance and we managed to get several new members. Even now I continue to work against the challenges of virtual recruitment by applying for social media features on UW social media pages and made our club schedule more visible on the RSO calendar.

Collaboration

Special Olympics is all about building a space where everyone feels comfortable with their own abilities, and we work toward advocating for the inclusion of people with all types of disabilities. Specific ways that I helped create an inclusive environment within the club was creating workout plans based on everyone’s skill level. I created a survey to inform our virtual workout decisions based on space available to move, ability to do floor workouts, and appropriate length of workouts. The survey data allowed me to create a workout plan that included everyone’s special needs, such as standing exercises that do not need a lot of physical space, and activities with 30 minutes of workout and 30 minutes of social interaction which best suited the member’s physical abilities. Additionally, I created a monthly health and wellness bingo challenge to include members that could not make it to the weekly meetings to help them feel included. By getting direct feedback I was able to redesign our club’s program to be inclusive of every member’s needs.

Creating change

Another Special Olympics project that I am currently working on is creating a quarterly roundtable conference with executive teams from other Washington Special Olympics chapters. I am working on this event because I think it will be beneficial to talk with other chapters, learn from each other, and build a stronger Washington community within Special Olympics. By working together, we can create a bigger impact within our own communities, and support other communities as well. I have met up with the King County Unified Coordinator to help assist in this endeavor by providing contacts of chapters in the area, and I have begun to reach out to gauge interest in this project. While it is still in the early stages, I see great potential in this project and how it can impact all Washington chapters of Special Olympics.

Scope of competence

This past year I have taken on many responsibilities, including the Networking and Alumni Committee Head for Phi Sigma Rho, a UW STEM sorority, working part-time at a market research consulting firm, and VP of Special Olympics, all while being a full-time student. While I was excited about all the amazing opportunities I was working on, I found myself being remarkably busy and sometimes overwhelmed. During the first quarter of Special Olympics’ virtual practices, the president and I were the only people running the workouts each week. This became stressful for both of us, and many of our other executive members were not as involved in the club. To combat this problem, the president and I created a sign-up system where at the beginning of the quarter all the executive members sign up for dates that are free to run the workout. This drastically improved my time management and allowed me to put more effort into the work I was responsible for. This experience has taught me to be transparent about my work capabilities, to delegate work fairly, and to advocate for my own mental health.

The recruitment video I created showcases what our club does and what we stand for. This helped to increase new members for our club

| What I Have Learned

The experiences I have had as a leader in Special Olympics have helped me shape my values of inclusion and empowerment and have led me to strive to work for those values in my educational and professional career. For example, I dedicated a class project to create a technological tool to help the visually impaired and used the competencies I learned from Special Olympics such as inclusion and creating change to motivate my work. Additionally, I hope to work for companies that have the value of accessibility in the future by working towards a career in creating inclusive designs for technology. I will take the knowledge I have gained from my friendships in Special Olympics to create a more inclusive world.