PS 676 held their first autism awareness day on Thursday, April 8, in the middle of World Autism Month. The PTA was excited about being at their first event since the pandemic began.
Thursday was a beautiful spring day and many different neighborhood organizations and NYC based developmental and community groups came to the Huntington Street schoolyard.
The United Nations-sanctioned World Autism Awareness Day is on April 2. Throughout the month, the non-profit Autism Speaks focuses on sharing stories and providing opportunities to increase understanding and acceptance of people with autism.
Principal Priscilla Figueroa is looking forward to making their Autism Awareness Day an annual event. It was the idea of safety officer Myriam Sekera, who has been working at the school for three years.
She wanted to organize this event partly because of her autistic 6-year-old daughter. “I just wanted to represent for her,” Sekera said. “They do breast cancer awareness but there is not a lot of awareness for kids with autism. I heard on the news the other day that one in every 54 kids are born with it.”
Her goal was to assist in helping people with autism to find a community. “You are going to need help,” Sekera said. “It is going to work for us. My daughter is six. She goes to PS 372 in Clinton Hill, which is a District 75 school. They help her so much.”
She hopes people learned that there might be more to a child not understanding.
“Just because your kid might not be able to understand that does not mean it is because they are bad, they just don’t understand, it has to be told a different way,” Sekera said.
“My daughter specifically, she does not speak, it took some time for her classes and everything to pick up what is right and what is wrong.”
She thought it could be helpful for other parents to understand that if their kid has autism it could just mean that they learn in a different way and at a different pace. She received helpful information, so she wanted to be able to pass it on to others.
A woman representing Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield had a table centered on nutrition and healthy eating. She found out about the event from parent coordinator, Marie Hueston.
Empire Blue Cross is involved in the community as they have supplied food for the Redemption Church food pantry that takes place on Fridays and they gave supplies for the PS 676 back to school event last fall.
Sarah King, who works at Advance Care Alliance, also had a table. ACA/NY is an organization that is particularly relevant to this event since they deal with and help individuals with developmental or intellectual disabilities.
The Office for People with Developmental Disability (OPWDD) is ACA/NY’s governing agency that assists individuals who have developmental or intellectual disabilities with getting services. According to King, once a kid is three or older, if they are determined eligible to get services and it is determined that they have a disability, then OPWDD can provide services to the individual. A care manager at ACA/NY can assist with supportive employment or after school respite. The “respite” is a helpful program that keeps kids busy after school while giving parents relief and allowing kids to be around individuals that have a similar disability.
Red Hook Initiative and The Red Hook Community Justice Center also had tables and they had information about various programming.
It was a collaborative effort between the parent coordinator and Sekera to organize the event for the community. “She knew some organizations, so we reached out to them, they said they were willing to help us out, so they came,” Sekera said. “It was a team effort.
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