Global Autism Project for Teacher Training

To all of our amazing supporters and donors,

Thank you very much for your continued patronage of the Global Autism Project and the vital clinical and advocacy work that we do around the world. Because of you, we are one step closer to actualizing our mission of ensuring that autistic children around the world receive the essential educational and therapeutic services to enhance their quality of life and engage meaningfully with their community. As the summer concludes we would like to take this time to keep you abreast of the dynamic and exciting work, we are doing domestically and internationally. As an autistic self-advocate, I would like to thank you all for supporting the Global Autism Project and making a difference in the lives of countless children with autism around the world.

To best describe the nature of our work I think I will take the liberty to paraphrase the fearless leader of our founder and CEO Molly Ola Pinney who poignantly states “doing things for others doesn’t help” and that “we as clinicians, self-advocates and humanitarians are entrepreneurs for social change.” These two phrases constitute our organization’s guiding philosophy of our organization and penetrate every aspect of our work As entrepreneurs, we aren’t shy about dreaming big and taking risks and providing innovative services and solutions to complex problems faced by the global autistic community. Moreover, we pride ourselves on our transparency and providing, and you can be assured that every dollar you donate to our organization goes back towards the work we do alongside (never for) our partners. 

Back in April of 2017, we launched our first ever Social Media campaign “Project Acceptance” in which we activated the voices of the autistic community and impelled. We thought it was about time that we shifted the conversation from general awareness of autism towards community acceptance and integration. Due to the incredible success of last year’s campaign, we repeated it this year by recruiting participants to not only but also give non-autistic people some action steps to take to promote acceptance of autistic people across the community.  Also during this year, we partnered with local Park Slope and Gowanus businesses such as Baba’s Pierogies and Ample Hills Creamery which raised more than $1,000 for services. Additionally, for project acceptance, we collaborated with Rethink Behavioral Health to Launch Accelerated Business Academy Centria Health Care of New Jersey who provides over $20,000 in scholarships to 5 BCBA’s to travel with the global autism project. 

Thank you so much for your continual support of the Global Autism Project and the groundbreaking and lifechanging work that we do internationally and domestically. As we strive to create a better more accepting world for children and adults with autism, we would like to take the time to update you on some exciting new initiatives we are spearheading from our office in Brooklyn New York and show you what your generous contributions are doing to make a difference So far 2018 has been an exciting year for us as we explore new partner sites in the Dominican Republic and Saudi Arabia, expand our Skill Corps volunteer program, launch our second annual Project acceptance campaign, and launching our new global self-advocacy campaign Self Project International Self-advocacy coalition building.

Due to your much-appreciated support, Last year we witnessed a tremendous growth of the organization and our services. We sent over 62 clinicians to over seven countries to provide hands on training at our partner sites. We also hosted our first ever International Partner Summit right here in Brooklyn New York, training employees at our partner sites in cutting-edge high quality administrative practices, leadership and staff management, and sustainable growth. In September we established our largest partnership site at Huicong Children Rehabilitation Training Center in Nanchang China and began training at the end of the month. In November, our Founder and CEO Molly Ola Pinney, spoke at a TEDx conference in New Bedford, MA about her 14 years of experience in international development and to advance our global mission for sustainable development. Overall in 2017 we provided over 117,760 cumulative training hours to our partner sites, launched 128 new online campaigns, and recruited a total of 402 compass members.

The first quarter of 2018 started off briskly as our trained and dedicated team of Skill Corps members traveled to nine out of our 10 partner sites continuing our tradition of sustainable development.   Thanks to your generosity we recently launched a new partnership with Parsimony in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic. We are extremely enthusiastic to advance our vision of autism acceptance in the Caribbean by training teachers to administer the highest quality of services to students who may otherwise not have the opportunity to receive them.  

Last year in honor of Autism Awareness month in April we launched our first ever international social media campaign titled Project Acceptance. The purpose of the campaign was to activate the voices of the autistic community by asking them to make a video describing what autism acceptance means to us. Due to the incredible success of last year’s campaign we are launching it again this year but . In addition to telling us what autism acceptance means to them, we also asked our participants to list action steps that non-autistic people can take to accept and integrate people with autism. Additionally, we are asking autism professionals including Behavioral Analysts, Speech and Language pathologists, and occupational therapists to list some action steps that they will. Here at the Global Autism Project, we believe that it is time for us as a society to move beyond autism awareness and start fully embracing the neurodiversity movement by breaking down barriers and fully accepting autistic people into our community with open arms!

In the summer of this year, we anticipate launching our newest initiative Project International Self-Advocacy Coalition building lead by our dedicated, professional, and enthusiastic office interns here in Brooklyn NY. The project was inspired by an initial request from National Geographic to interview us for an upcoming article they are writing about the neurodiversity movement and how to paraphrase our correspondent Lynn Johnson “people on the spectrum refuse to be ignored and relegated to the margins of society”. Lynn’s words inspired us to create a coalition uniting domestic and international self-advocates to raise awareness and promote inclusion of autism internationally in a culturally relevant and sustainable manner. For the project we will be recruiting and training predominantly domestic self-advocates to serve as mentors to emerging self-advocate The purpose of the initiative is threefold; to spread awareness of autism around the world with the hope of eradication of stigma, build na indigenous culture of self-advocacy in places where the concept is foreign, and most importantly empower autistic people and their families to access to early childhood intervention and continual support services designed their quality of life.

We thank you once again for your support and patronage. Our work would not be possible without the kindness and generosity of philanthropists such as yourselves! Together we can create a better world for autistic people and their families.