Education United States Project #19669

Provide Scholarships for Adults with Disabilities

by Specially Adapted Resource Clubs (SPARC)

Project Report | Sep 16, 2015
We Not Only Accept Donations, We Do Outreach Too

By George Bounacos | Volunteer

That's a big bag of carrots!

Can you imagine a more bleak existence than sitting in your chair and watching daytime television and reruns every day?

Well neither can we!

SPARC is proud of our continuing education and lifelong learning programs. The best part of learning throughout your life is that your world keeps expanding. And as we learn, we also practice being great community citizens.

SPARC now works with TWO organizations to provide loving support and outreach for our community. Yes, we're a group of individuals who need your donations to help us pay for therapists and some supplies, but we LOVE giving back to our communities.

We have begun working with our local Ronald McDonald House and help a local church's food pantry provide 100 families with fresh fruits and vegetables every month. We think you'll love the story of how the church came to us and asked, "How can we help you?"

We turned the question around on them and said, "Well, how can we together?"

Together we help create a new way to get fresh foods to families in need.

A church member goes to a local food bank where they can get fresh produce for free. Those potatoes and vegetables and fruits come in HUGE quantities--often as much as 50 pounds. A different church member brings all that healthy and fresh food to our clubhouse. That's where we bag them for individual families. The church comes back in a couple of hours and brings the sorted and bagged food back so that they can distribute it the next day.

Hunger is a worldwide problem. There is hunger even in America's wealthiest communities. A typical food pantry has to rely on canned goods and shelf-stable products like peanut butter and pasta because food is often stored for a long time. By getting fresh produce and having us immediately bag the food the day before it's distributed, we make a BIG DIFFERENCE in the quantity and quality of what people receive.

Helping a local food pantry is just one way we give back to our community. Wlll you please help support our efforts? You help us, and you help the people we help. It's win-win-win!

We make family-sized bags out of big bags!

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Jun 8, 2015
SPARC Participant Base is Growing!

By George Bounacos | Volunteer

Wheelchair decorating at SPARC

We announced the great news in our last report that SPARC's third clubhouse facility would open soon.

That dream is now a reality, and we are able to provide day support services for more than 30 adults with disabilities in Virginia. As SPARC expands its reach, we are still aware that there are hundreds of people who could use our services, and we would provide them if we could.

For now, we continue to grow at a responsible pace and to apply our unique and proprietary financial model that allows us to provide services at ratios approaching 1:1 in three locations with operations every weekday. That means that a SPARC participant can attend a club facility every single weekday if they want.

New partners allow us to offer new programs like 10 week sessions of social or vocational classses at a fraction of the price others pay. And SPARC recipients engage in their community in the way they choose. Some people choose lifelong learning opportuities because who really ever grows tired of learing new things? Many participants work with outreach of their own by doing things like helping a local food pantry create bags for individual use.

And everyone loves music and art therapy.

You can help us continue to offer new programs and scholarhips to adults who are living on a fixed income and wouldn't otherwise be able to afford to participate even at our greatly reduced fees of only $400 per month.

Giving $100 provides a week of SPARC participation for someone who might not be able to attend. You can also sponsor smaller amounts and provide art supplies as well as contribute to the general scholarship fund that goes to people who need it most.

With your help, we opened our third facility this year. With your contiuing help, we can ensure that people who graduate from high school don't graduate to the couch as our Executive Director often says. Instead, participants get to visit their community every weekday, learn new things, help others, work in creative arts, and engage in socialization.

We can't think of anything we would rather be doing than helping our friends do all of those and more. Please help us today so we can continue to reach out to adults with disabilities who might otherwise be stranded at home.

Creative work during Art Therapy

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