Sports and physical activity are extremely beneficial to children's development, not only developing their physical health but also their social skills, problem-solving abilities, and conflict-resolution skills. These activities should be accessible to all, not just those who are "able-bodied." Children and adults with special needs, whether it be physical, developmental, or social disabilities, deserve to have access to the same resources and activities that those who are "able-bodied" or "neurotypical" have access to. Join Russ Ewell and friends as they discuss why inclusion matters in the world of sports and physical activity.
Episode References
Blaze Sports
E-Sports
University High School
Congressional Citation
Jefferson Award
The King's Academy
Sports and physical activity are extremely beneficial to children's development, not only developing their physical health but also their social skills, problem-solving abilities, and conflict-resolution skills. These activities should be accessible to all, not just those who are "able-bodied." Children and adults with special needs, whether it be physical, developmental, or social disabilities, deserve to have access to the same resources and activities that those who are "able-bodied" or "neurotypical" have access to. Join Russ Ewell and friends as they discuss why inclusion matters in the world of sports and physical activity.
Episode References
Blaze Sports
E-Sports
University High School
Congressional Citation
Jefferson Award
The King's Academy
[inaudible]
Speaker 2:digital, the
Speaker 3:digital scribbler podcast. Today we're going to be talking about why inclusion matters and we're going to have a specific focus on sports community, East soccer in IE hoops. My name is Russell and it's, in this particular episode we'll be discussing the benefit of sports leagues and community building for children and adults with disabilities, including why they are currently failing children with disabilities and how we can cater them to be more inclusive. Now, this is not something to say that we should have all sports changed in every way, but it's about coming up with the kind of programs and organizing the kind of communities that make certain that people, adults and children, kids, teens have an opportunity to experience sports. We'll conclude the episode by speaking with Ray Kim and Greg Bosniak who have both been central to developing programs like East soccer in E hoops where kids and adults with disabilities are encouraged to play together with those who have no disabilities and where the necessary accommodations are available to everyone who has a need. First off, I want to begin by explaining how most sports leagues and teams are currently failing children with physical, developmental, and other disabilities. If you go to any sporting game or practice, it is quite simple to notice how they are unsuitable. First in practice, the method used for coaching is not accessible to those with developmental and intellectual disabilities. There are particular learning styles that special education teachers and tutors use when educating children with autism, down syndrome, ADHD or other intellectual disabilities. This system often involves a process of tethering what they are learning to what they already know. For instance, a coach will not reach a child with disabilities by merely telling them that they should aim to score a goal. Instead, they will need to link this objective to something positive that already exists in their own life, such as the act of being rewarded for cleaning their room or using the bathroom. By embracing methods the special education teachers and tutors use to teach those with developmental and intellectual disabilities. Coaching will be much more effective and accessible to those living with these sorts of disabilities and the players will nonetheless be able to further engage in the sport to a higher understanding and capacity. The ways in which current sports teams and leagues are unsuitable for children with physical disabilities is much more apparent invisible. It is so seldom that mobility AIDS are offered or accepted by sports teams and so frequently this results in either a complete exclusion, those with physical disabilities or segregation. Even in the instances when children with mobility difficulties or those who use wheelchairs or other sorts of devices are allowed to participate in sports. The playing field is never wholly equalized. They are not given to any kind of help or accommodation that can make the experience a positive or a fair one and are often disregarded and ostracized by the non-disabled or typical players. So why is it essential that we work to remedy this problem and make the world of sports and more accessible place for children and adults with disabilities? First sports can have a very significant impact on a child's life and the development of crucial skills. Being on a sports team can help strengthen social skills, develop the ability to work as part of a team, improved problem solving and heightened other skills that will carry over later in life. However, often it is difficult to find a league or organization that is both accommodating and inclusive for children with disabilities. This is slowly being remedied as many more become available so that children can have the same opportunities for participation in sports. Sports are so necessary for helping children learn to socialize and interact with other children. When a part of a team, children's communication skills develop drastically and they can form a sense of community. On the other hand, when they are ostracized through an accessibility, they are deprived of this experience and the chance to build a community through a common ground. The benefits of having equal ground and opportunity in sports are manifold. I am participating in modified sports, provided children with a way to empower themselves and build comradery with their peers. They have space where they are in charge of their body and can effectively determine their own limits without being excluded from the activity. In addition to modifying and creating sports leagues that focus on providing accessibility and opportunities for those with and without disabilities to play together. There are also options for children and adults to play sports within the disability community. These types of programs, of course vary programs such as the special Olympics are explicitly designed for youth and young adults with disabilities and on many occasions competitors need an aide teacher or volunteer to help them participate in the activity. Sports are modified and ways including wheelchair basketball, wear hoops or Lord or sitting volleyball where the net is lowered. Many communities also have integrated teams where kids with and without disabilities compete together on these teams. AIDS and extra volunteers are a norm that can help children with disabilities participate. Blaze sports is an excellent resource and provides a list of resources for athletes of all ages to be able to find a sports program that fits their wants, needs, and skill levels. There are many other resources available like this with a simple keyword search into Google, but for the sake of convenience, I will also link a few options in the description of this podcast. These modifications, whether an integrated sports or specifically designated programs are critical in allowing children with disabilities to have a positive experience playing a sport and being part of a team. It makes organized sports accessible to them and helps them become healthier and that they are given an outlet to fulfill the recommended 60 minutes of physical activity per day for use as recommended by the department of disability and human development. It also gives them an outlet to gain in valuable life skills alongside their peers such as developing social skills, learning how to work as a team, tuning leadership abilities and learning how to work toward a common goal with sportsmanship and rigor. I've done my own work in this area wanting to create an area for children with disabilities to have positive experience with sports. In 2007 I launched East soccer a league where children with a range of abilities and disabilities all work and play together from East soccer grew E hoops and several other programs that you can find on our East sports website. ELEAGUE a with the same mentality and purpose is either hoops which played basketball instead of soccer. I'm continuing to look forward to do work to integrate the athletic community and the disability community and believe that every child should have the opportunity to engage and have a positive experience on a sports team. Other people have done great work, which you can see again on our site called e-sports. Like we have a new program called East surf that's coming out, which is pretty exciting. You can search those, uh, either by using the keyword East, soccer, E sports or E hoops or you can go directly to our e-sports site. And so when I think about all the possibilities that exist, remember you don't have to have a formalized, organized, preexisting organization to provide these kinds of sports. You can go into your own backyard. You can do what we did with East soccer back in April of 2000 and find a small park in foster city, which is what we did with a few friends and handful of kids. My two sons have special needs than I thought they'd benefit from learning the game of soccer while building friendships with other children. I'd read an article about the fact that hand eye coordination was more difficult than foot dye coordination and that's why most of the world play soccer as opposed to baseball and basketball because it's a lot easier. It's a lot more natural. What we didn't expect was that over the next decade, Issaquah would develop into an all volunteer inclusive for program that serves hundreds of kids with and without special needs in the Bay area and around the world, really thousands and more importantly, it's free. That's the thing that we really like about it. It's free. It's not only accessible in the way that we empower kids to be able to participate with typical kids. It's not only free in that we empower special needs kids to participate with typical kids, but it's free financially and that's a big deal because it removes a barrier. It's free with regard to you don't have to have any preconceived beliefs, you don't have to be from assault, certain class culture, race, gender, none of these things matter. It's all about getting that inclusion going. East soccer's dedicated to empowering both typical and special needs, children of all abilities to reach their full athletic and social potential. East soccer's inclusion methodology promotes leadership as well as the social character and athletic development for each child in an individualized manner. Of course this is just one small step and an effort that should be both national and international to truly make a change in the society. The effort to change anything. Let's come from many places and many people. This needs to be recognized as society wide in accessibility issue and combated by ensuring the proper accommodations and accessibility measures. You're always taken inter abled sports leagues and sports leagues accessible to those with a range of disabilities is the future and is what every child and adult with a disability deserves. And so we hope you're going to enjoy this first podcast about really how inclusion in sports work together and we're going to continue to just push forward the purpose and the cause of why inclusion matters. Like I said, I've got Ray cam and I've got Greg Bosniak here. And let's start off. Ray and Greg, maybe Greg, you can start us out with an update on East soccer and any thoughts you might have about our introductory thoughts.
Speaker 4:Great. Thanks for us. Thanks for having us. Um, well this year has been an exciting year for, uh, Isacur on a number of fronts. Um, you know, just one thing that's, that's been exciting. Not only is it growing around the Bay area and the programs continued to just add more kids, more families, both typical and special needs. But this year was a great, uh, opportunity for e-sports to get some, some commendation and just really get recognized in a, in a new way. Um, as the San Jose earthquakes, uh, nominated us to be their community service MVP, which was really, really cool. And what I, you know, what was really awesome about it is that it's really grown out of just building a great friendship, a great relationship between East soccer and the quakes. And the thing that they really love about what we do is that we're pulling in their Academy kids and the Academy kids coming up within the earthquakes organization are getting a chance to learn how to work with kids with special needs to be able to appreciate the differences, to be able to work on their character. And it was something that you talked about in your introduction about how uh, it's an opportunity for these kids to grow in their leadership and to grow in, in, in areas where, uh, they might not get that opportunity at school or another, uh, in the soccer leagues that they've grown up in where they've been elite players. And so that's been really exciting. But
Speaker 3:so the, maybe you can for the listeners, cause you know, there are going to be listeners, you're going to be like, you know, how in the world did you get connected and build a relation with earthquakes? Because let's say someone
Speaker 5:out there in the great state of Michigan where I'm from, besides that they want to start at East soccer program and they want to kind of get on the map with the, uh, either the local high school, the local college, uh, whatever it may be. Can you tell them a little bit about how that happened?
Speaker 4:Uh, well, it's, it's probably, um, from several different aspects. But one, one that was really exciting was what we were doing, what, what East soccer was starting to do in the community, uh, raised, uh, sort of raise the eyebrows or the awareness of, of the Academy director at the earthquakes because he found out he and his wife found out that they might be having a child with special needs. And so he had heard through his coaching and what he was doing that there were,
Speaker 5:well, let's back up just one second because I want you to remember the so, so, and I think because, because people are going to be, how in the world do I get to know the Academy of the right guy who runs the Academy at the earthquakes or any professional team? I don't think it just happens, right? So it's a little simpler than that. And I know you know the story, but, um, one day I was on LinkedIn and on my LinkedIn profile I had all the stuff that I do, the digital scribbler company that I S that I started to help facilitate through educational technology, um, um, uh, kids who have, uh, uh, communication challenges, verbal challenges, and created that software put down on my LinkedIn what we were doing with East soccer and various things. And then, uh, someone from the earthquakes found me on there and invited me to, yeah, I'm going to let you tell the story. Uh, someone on the earthquakes found me, uh, there and invited me to a dinner for the new stadium. So maybe you can, that's what I want you to go that far back. I know you didn't know. I know you had no idea going way back. Yeah. Because I think the reason I want to go back is because I think when we tell stories like, Oh yeah, are you hoops? This is at the Warrior's place. People are like, okay, I don't even get that. I don't, that was never our goal and that's not our goal. Yeah. But it's exciting because it shows organizations around the Bay are interested in doing good things for people and helping people. Right. But I think when someone starts out in their backyard or in their neighborhood, a field of their school, which is where we started at[inaudible] outage, a middle school in foster city and we just got in there, cleaned out the goose dung off the floor, got eight year old seven year olds, six year olds coaches together. We, we, we weren't thinking about this. And I think sometimes what can happen is people can think, well, what's the point of going out in my backyard? And starting something like this is if you build it like the field of dreams movie says people will come. And I think they need to hear one how good hearted the earthquakes are, how much their organization is in the community that they were searching on the web, in the LinkedIn. And I think the same thing happened with the warriors. So maybe you can tell people about it. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4:So, um, you know, as I remember it, that it is, it's, it's neat because I think Rahul at the time was working as a community services, a relationship, not relationship director at the quakes. And they were getting ready to have a brunch or I think it was a brunch or dinner, like you said. And they were looking for organizations that were doing things in the community. They were connected with, uh, doing good through soccer and you know, how to be able to meet needs and, and so I think that, like you said, it caught their eye that this was about inclusion, that this was about helping typical special needs kids work together. And that was something that was, was like, Hey, this is something we're not, we need to learn about and that we want to be involved with. And so let's get you know, yourself Russ, to come to this luncheon or, and it was, I think what was really neat is after that, I know you went to the lunch and you talked to Rahul, you got to meet some of the earthquakes players and some of the other types of the president of the earthquakes who's now the president of the A's right now. And I think you got to talk to a one to Lao ski who's now the all time leading score in the MLS. Got to meet him. Yeah.[inaudible] score for the MLS. I didn't know, I didn't know me meeting somebody could just[inaudible] I hope he remembers that. Yeah. I just remember you telling me these stories. Yeah. Him and[inaudible] was very excited, but um, but I think what was really, really neat about it was that the interaction that you had, the time you spent with our Rahul and the guys there really made a really, really made an impact such as at Rockpool. I know you gave him my contact info, but he contacted me right away. He wanted to not only find out more about us, but he met, he wanted to meet for a lunch and talk about what we do, how we built the program, why, how it's changing kids lives that are typical and special needs. And then it led to us over the past probably five to 10 years now I'm just starting small and with a lot of different opportunities, not only for us to do things with them, but for them to learn from us so that they could, because one of things that they were really interested in was they were like, we want to, we want families in the community who have kids with special needs to feel like we're a home for them. They can come to one of our games and they can feel comfortable coming to one of our games. We want to learn how to be an organization that really attracts them to come to a stadium environment that might not be easy for kids with special needs. So I felt like it was a, it, it started a great partnership there of us learning from each other. And then of course, you know, the other story I told kind of followed later, but, uh, that, you know, that's, that's exciting. I think it's a great point too that, um, just their interest and, and what's really made it a great partnership is us learning from each other over all these years. And of course now great things are happening and we're doing, you know, these events at the stadium and, uh, being honored as their MVP for events at the stadium. I don't want to assume people know what you're talking about. Gotcha. So you know, what we started with, which was small, which was just having our coaches and kids go out and enjoy the game and get tickets and do some, some fundraisers and stuff. Grew to a point where last year we had, for the first time a, the earthquakes gave us a stadium day. They basically opened their stadium, uh, in the off season and said, you, you can have the stadium for a day, bring all these soccer families and kids you can from all around the Bay area and we're going to have our Academy kids out there and we want you to do East soccer sessions and we're going to bring our Academy kids in. We want to serve you with free food in the stadium and let the kids come and enjoy actually playing soccer on the fields at Avaya stadium. So that was a kind of a dream. We had talked about years before and the statement was even opened and here it was happening and they actually called me and, and, and, and just invited us to have that opportunity. So that I think that just kind of shows the, um, one we're super grateful, but it, it shows how far that partnership has gone, that friendship. And uh, so we're going to do another one this year on November 3rd, uh, the same thing. And, and you know, obviously just build off of where we started last year, but I think we had about 350 families and kids come out last year and we'll have that, you know, plus more this year.
Speaker 3:Anything else you didn't tell us about the visit to the
Speaker 5:Oh yeah.[inaudible] I'm like, you get nominated to be the MLS community MVP by the earthquakes. You told us. I got you. I get maybe I distracted you. You know, cause I want to hear about like, did you eat dinner or did you, did you go on the field? Did you get some photos taken where you smooth in one day and did he did, I mean cause I was pretty excited when I at me. You know, you always send me a couple of private picks. I was like, you gotta be kidding me. Yes.
Speaker 3:You just can't say enough about earthquakes. Right, right. I, I, I mean I think other teams do work in their community, but the level of getting on the ground and finding people, uh, and, and, and the, the good fortune we had to be found but is extraordinary. And I think that it, wherever you may be living Chicago, Boston, New York city, Los Angeles, Seattle, um, you know, Atlanta, uh, Orlando itself, uh, Tallahassee, wherever you may be living, um, S Tupelo, Mississippi, some small town, uh, you got to believe that if you're doing something great, there are people whose hearts are good, that are working in positions of influence, they'll find you. Yes. Right. And that's the thing I learned from this. So tell us a little about Orlando and maybe a little about your chase center visit as well.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I'll uh, try to do this briefly because there's a lot of, a lot of neat stuff there. I mean, basically it was, I knew something exciting was happening when I was getting a call from major league soccer headquarters in New York on my phone, in the office. And I said, okay, why is major league soccer calling me? And
Speaker 5:man, you know, you were, you were[inaudible] they call me up to the veterans leading[inaudible].
Speaker 4:It was really cool when they called and, and how excited they were. And you know, basically just said, Hey, we just want to let you know that you've been nominated by the San Jose earthquakes to be able to represent them at then 20, 19 MLS all star game in Orlando and that we are their community service MVP for the year that we'll be representing them, their team at the event. So, you know, it was really exciting. Got to fly out there with one of the, uh, other coordinators that I work with Jerry in Isacur and they flew us out to Orlando. Uh, we've got to stay in the hotel where basically had the MLS all star expo going on. So we, and we had the red carpet treatment, we showed up and they had food for us and all kinds of gifts. And I mean definitely, uh, definitely was an amazing experience. And what was really, really exciting about it too is that within the league they had the 24 teams, each had one MVP they sent. So we got to be the sort of earthquakes were about representatives. We wore their Jersey and we got to meet with all the other 23 representatives that were there. Did you go with someone else? I think you did, right? Yeah, I went with, with uh, with Jerry[inaudible] who's one of our coaching coordinators. It's been part of the soccer with me for many years. So
Speaker 5:Jerry, you know, I mean he's running a company right now I think. Yeah. And yeah, and uh, and Jerry's been in our East soccer program, had his kids in our East soccer program. Uh, his kids are pretty good at soccer. And then I know too that Jerry Jerry did this while he was getting his PhD from Stanford. And the reason I mentioned that to listeners just because those are the kinds of volunteers we get, right. And that's the kind of dedication they have in the middle of all that. He always made sure to be a big part of the program. That's why I thought it was great for him to be able to go with you to that. Um, tell us about the chase center. What's it look like?
Speaker 4:J center's amazing. Honestly, I one that was again w from doing our warriors event every year. I was really cool to get a call from them and say, Hey, we want you want you to come and be there. Sort of an exclusive opening before the public gets to see it. Yup. Got it. That call the office, you were like, you lead level now in New York city, you know, professional soccer. Hey Greg, what's up man? We need you right now. Golden state warriors. Pretty soon, you know, G commissioner is going to call you and say, Greg, what can we do just to make the NBA a more family friendly place? I see it right now. Just will you do me a favor? You see the vision. Remember the little people when you, when you're, when you're, when you're riding in with LeBron, uh, you know, doing your thing. W Mexican, you know, you're going to get a call from England. Hey, you know, uh, I'm ready. What's that United team with their got Chester United and Manchester United. Hey Greg. You know, we just, we don't know. We don't know who to draft. We don't have to pick.
Speaker 5:We, we got the soccer guys coming up from club, we don't know what to do and they're gonna call you up pretty good.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Well it's a beautiful place. Yeah. The thing that was amazing about it, um, you know, and I have the soccer background and, and you know, earlier this year I have, I got the opportunity to be in Barcelona and it'd be at the Barcelona stadium, which was in the world and world soccer. That is one of the premier stadiums and venues. It's like walking into a mall before you walk into the stadium. It's just phenomenal. When I showed up in downtown San Francisco to go to see the chase center, it was, it was all world. It was really state of the art. And again, the organization, just the friendliness as we walked in, uh, before you even get into the stadium, you get onto the property and there's gift shops and there's places to take photos as a family. And there's, I mean, there's a whole experience that you get to have as a family even before walk in the front door and a just going in and just see the way that they built it to really be family friendly, to be obviously, you know, phenomenal experience to be able to view the game. Um, I mean, and then, you know, we got to talk with our, with, with the folks that we know over there at the, uh, at the warriors and they were really excited to talk to me about us come out again and being at their special needs family appreciation night and doing a halftime show again this year and post pregame shoot around stuff or anything during that time. No, I don't do any of the dancing. I just, I just enjoyed that. Yeah, it does. I've seen about that. I see. Right. You in a little, just a little break dancing. Let's get rid of it.
Speaker 5:So, so everybody understand, you know, uh, Greg was the MLS MVP, uh, nominate for the earthquakes, which is outstanding. He's done a tremendous amount of work getting down there. I stay involved, but Greg really runs, uh, our, our EAP program, our e-sports program, and, and has as, as put cap pushing it ahead and forward. And if you're interested in volunteering, uh, there'll be links in the, uh, the a body of this, uh, podcast. You can look at online. There also be a transcript connected to this and you can get links to how to be, how you can volunteer anywhere in the Bay. Uh, and you know, if you're someplace else listening to this, you can always email us and we can tell you if there's a program in your city or we can help you get one started. Uh, but, uh, then Greg again was at the MLS all star game in Orlando, uh, was at the chase center in San Francisco. And it is, it's, Greg just described it. The warriors, as most people know, are an elite organization. And by that I mean, and the way they treat people. I've been there, I've been to games for different reasons separate than e-sports. Uh, and I've had an opportunity to meet players and, and be around the coaches. The whole organization is extraordinary. Yeah. And, and there again, they found us by searching on[inaudible]. And I just think that if you're living in a, in another place, uh, Detroit, Michigan, you're living in, uh, Des Moines, Iowa, wherever you are. Remember if you built this thing, there are people out there looking for how can we make a difference when you're building a professional organization, you don't personally have time to go out and create those things, but you have the opportunity to invest in them. And many of them have some connection through empathy, compassion, or through family members that make them want to be involved. And so, uh, let's go ahead and get a Ray to just tell us an update, uh, on the, uh, E hoops program and, uh, and we'll start to close our podcast down.
Speaker 6:Well, we, we've learned so much from everything else started with the soccer. And the amazing thing is when these volunteers and coaches were involved with the soccer, they continued wanting to explore in other ways to, uh, establish inclusion and get more of the community involved. So, uh, one of the great things we have, uh, with E hoops, it's, it's spread all throughout the barrier where, where one of our friends Bobby drawn has done a phenomenal job in a Hercules are starting it in his own, in his own neighborhood with some friends and, and they've actually really reached a lot of families. Um, you know, we're excited about even in this fall, like, you know, we've had multiple E hoops program starting just from, from a grassroots level. And I had the story that I just, I heard about this past Wednesday, um, as we're getting to start an a, another a fall season in San Francisco with the, uh, university of San Francisco. They're a men's and women's basketball teams. This year, the viable team is getting involved. Um, but some of the volunteers were high school students in the city and they happened to, uh, they were, they were told about it by one of the volunteer coaches who works for the school. It's a university high and they've been volunteering for the past two seasons. And they went back to the high school and requested to the faculty we would like a course or a class on special needs. And so over the summer the faculty said, Hey, we've been hearing our high school students saying we want this course. Cause they, they've had this phenomenal experience working with kids, a typical and those special needs in this E program. Um, so the, the, uh, the, the, the high school said, Hey, since you work with this, one of the volunteers that you have, oops,
Speaker 5:is actually, uh, on FOC staff. There is this, uh, is this like NSA, CIA classified because you won't tell us the name of the high school and the person I said university, uh, university of high and that one, that one flew right by me. I was like, I'm listening, I'm going with the university high. It's, yeah, it's right in Pacific Heights. It's one of the more renowned, uh, private schools in San Francisco. And give them a shout out. I gotta make sure we hear that university. Hi. Sorry folks. I didn't hear it. Maybe you heard it. You know, but we want to make sure. And who got who, who, who, who, who's, who was working there or whatever. So Elizabeth Shafer. Anoth uh, she actually originally started as a volunteer at East soccer. Yes. She was in foster city back with us as a little little tyke. Yeah. So she was actually how old I am. That's terrible. Why did you bring that up? So I mean, so she understands that she experienced it. She eats drinks and sleeps at Breeza after her DNA. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. So she has now found a, a passion specialty unit for E hoops. Um, and it's great because we have more girls involved and my daughter loves it, so she is actually works for university high. Her students, um, said, Hey, we've got to do something at height at our high school to get more awareness. Now, if I remember right, Elizabeth got it kinda rolling at st Mary's where she went to college. That's right. She did. Yeah. She was involved in help you out. I'm just trying to, yeah, I'm just trying to forgetting since I kind of missed the earlier, you know, Q, I thought I'd, you know, make a little contribution.[inaudible] reason I'm saying this is because if you're out there listening and you say, Hey, what good does it do to start a program of the backyard or at the school across the street like we did? Well, when these kids grow up, it's part of their DNA. Right? And, and I think when you get great schools, like you said, university, great schools like that, that are interested not just in educating their kids, but giving their kids a holistic experience of life, building their character, developing their compassion, their empathy as well as their intelligence intellectually in developing their emotional intelligence. Uh, just creating a whole person. Cause I think that, you know, we live in a polarized country today, but when you're doing things like inclusive work with kids in the hoops that's going to make you more inclusive and it's gonna make you less polarizing, you're just going to be able to understand different people. So that's very exciting. Gotta give Elizabeth Shafer an office, shout out there. Her brothers, our producer, you know, so, so you know, we're not giving him a shout out because I didn't, I didn't see him at the program. I didn't see him in the photos of the hoops, not just getting, he's been working with us on all these programs since he was a small tyke. Um, that's so cool. So it was, it became a seven day course, seven day. It was a seven day course is all about topics, uh, helping those with special needs from, from uh, middle school, high school level to adult. That's incredible about employment, housing transitions, therapies, terminology, um, how to work with them. One on one, how to interact, how to build. I want to go to university high school against the university of high school. I want to go there. Yes. This is incorrect. That school put a seven, eight course together. That's right. Unbelievable. Had Elizabeth teach it and it had all the volunteers for me hoops share their experience so they can, uh, um, get the rest of the student body awareness and more involved in stuff. That is so cool. Yeah. That must be an incredible student body. You know what I mean? Yeah. Can you imagine that? I mean, I know back in the day we used to have volunteers from Kings. What's the name of this Academy? One of our, probably we probably get people from there time to time still kinks Academy's another one of those kinds of schools. That's really cool. I think there are a lot of schools like that. They just need an opportunity like the earthquakes, like the warriors to see it be a part of it. It's been great having you guys on and hopefully today helps you understand why inclusion matters. There's a lot of highlight points, a lot of milestones. But at the end of the day, when you help adults and children with special needs, when you help a typical kids learn how to include, it leads to incredible opportunities to change the world. And I think with the help of the earthquakes, with the help of, of the warriors, with the help of a schools like university high in, in, in San Francisco with the help of cities like foster city, that for years hosted us net recharged as a dime. These places have made it possible. I mean, I, you know, it was because of the work in foster city that I got that congressional citation because the Congressman for that area found me, heard about me and was like, we got to give this guy a citation. And then of course, the Jefferson award, all that happened and, and you know, we gotta give a shout out to, uh, the former Congressman, uh, who passed away some years ago, uh, Tom Lantos and his family for the way they are and the way they've been a part of this community for decades. And made it a better in so many ways. Uh, and then the, the, you know, the Jefferson, uh, award came from, uh, a Jackie, Jackie Onassis founded that and got that started so that people would be awarded for community service. What I'm trying to say over and over again, if you're listening is you can start in your backyard. You can start in the field across from your house. That's right. And some really special things can happen. I know for my two sons, they ended up in a film, uh, the in I want to say just so many cool things happen all because we're out there. Uh, hope you'll subscribe to the podcast. Thank you for listening. If you like what you're hearing, make sure to rate and review the show. Five stars will help us out a lot. If you don't like it. Five stars will help us out a lot. So give us five stars anyway and share about the show on Facebook or any of the social media platforms and emails you have. Any topic ideas or you have any insights or things you wish we would cover. We are going to be rolling now. It's taken us a little bit to be able to get[inaudible]
Speaker 7:up and running just cause we've, as you can tell, we do a lot of other work besides podcast. And so, uh, thank you for listening and have a wonderful a time a few days until we're back at you
Speaker 2:[inaudible]
Speaker 7:for listening to the digital scribbler podcast. If you like what you're hearing, subscribe to the feed and please leave a five star rating and write us a review. Also, make sure to check out digital scribbler.com to learn more about our apps, products, and efforts to help bring inclusion into the mainstream. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next
Speaker 2:[inaudible].