Good Neighbor Podcast: Cooper City
Bringing Together Local Businesses & Neighbors of Cooper City
Good Neighbor Podcast: Cooper City
EP #306 - Angels Reach Foundation with Dorinda Luzardo
When doctors told Dori Luzardo her autistic child would "never have a conversation" or "live much of a life," she faced a pivotal moment. Rather than accept this limiting prognosis, she channeled her 20 years of education experience and "stubborn genes" into creating something revolutionary: Angels Reach Foundation.
Established in 2004, this transformative nonprofit has since helped over 4,000 neurodivergent youth develop their unique potential in a world that often focuses on what they can't do rather than what they can. Their comprehensive approach spans K-12 education, therapy services, family resources, and innovative entrepreneurship programs that allow young adults with social challenges to build sustainable livelihoods while focusing on their natural talents.
What truly distinguishes Angels Reach is their unwavering belief that integration benefits everyone. When neurodivergent individuals learn alongside neurotypical peers, both groups flourish. The typically developing students gain invaluable leadership skills and emotional intelligence, while their neurodivergent peers develop social confidence in supportive environments. This philosophy challenges the persistent myth that separate education serves either group better.
Despite facing significant hardships—including the devastating loss of their permanent facility with just one day's notice—Angels Reach continues to expand their impact globally. Their current partnership with the government of Madrid demonstrates how their trademarked methodologies can transform inclusive practices across cultures.
The foundation operates with remarkable flexibility, establishing micro-schools and clinics within existing private institutions, offering remote learning options, and creating learning pods that require just five participants to launch. This adaptability allows them to meet families wherever they are, from Miami-Dade and Broward counties to international communities.
Discover how Angels Reach is creating a world without limiting labels by visiting angelsreach.org or angelsreachacademy.org. Their story reminds us that human potential knows no boundaries when communities truly embrace the value that everyone brings.
For more information call (305) 828-5276 or visit https://www.angelsreach.org/.
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Jeremy Wolf.
Speaker 2:Hello, hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Good Neighbor Podcast. I'm your host, of course, jeremy Wolf, and today I'd like to welcome to the show Dori Luzardo. Hope I got the pronunciation right there Did.
Speaker 3:I nail it Dori.
Speaker 2:You did, you got it. Oh yes, batting 100 right off the bat, perfect. And Dori joins us from the Angels Reach Foundation, which is a nonprofit. Anytime I meet a business that is a nonprofit, I'm always very, very happy to kind of showcase and spotlight what they do Very important, the work that nonprofits are doing in our community. So with that, thanks everyone for joining us. Dori, thank you for being here. I'm excited to get into this. Start by telling everybody a little bit about what you do at Angels Reach Foundation.
Speaker 3:I'm happy to, jeremy. So Angels Reach Foundation is a transformative nonprofit. We've been established since 2004, and we have been focused on creating a world free from labels. That is our main mission and that encompasses our work with the neurodivergent youth. We have specialized in working with children, youth and young adults who are somewhere on the autism spectrum or who have emotional or behavioral challenges. But I think that what makes us truly, truly unique is our sense of community. We believe that our world is designed to bring everyone together and that everyone has value and, as such, all of our programs, from our K through 12 schools, our therapy programs, our community and family resource programs are all about fostering and nurturing compassion and inclusion in all sense. We see a world where everyone is valued for their particular abilities and not anything that would be considered a disability, that would limit them anything that would be considered a disability that would limit them.
Speaker 2:You know I've been saying that often lately that everybody has within them an innate potential for something great and it's unfortunate because so many people live their lives without tapping into that inner potential. And it's great that you're doing this work to help. So you mentioned you're a transformative nonprofit. That's right.
Speaker 3:What does that mean? Specifically? Into situations such as educational systems or community employment systems, where there are barriers that limit some individuals from fully participating and fully benefiting from all of the resources that a community can offer. And we go in there with compassion, with understanding, with the belief that just a little bit of information can make a huge difference, and that's what we provide. We bring information, we bring information, we bring resources, we bring training, we bring specialists and we help make what was considered impossible before possible.
Speaker 2:Now are you dealing specifically with youth, or is it all ages? What is your demographic?
Speaker 3:Our youngest begins at two years old and our oldest has been 43.
Speaker 3:Now most of our population is school-aged, most of our population is somewhere between 5 and 22, but we go where the need is. So, since there is a specific need for young adults who have some condition that may limit their ability to be able to become steadily employed, for example, we have started to reopen our young entrepreneurship program, where we help these individuals with great talent but perhaps social phobias or social inadequacies limit them from really feeling that they fit in, at least right now, into a regular employment setting. We help them become self-sufficient by running their own entrepreneurship, but with support, so the administrative side can be supported, the kinds of things that bring them great stress, the accounting, the legalities that can be supported through the foundation, and they can be the talent and do what they love to do. So, while most of our population is school-aged, again, we go where we're needed, whether it's here, locally. We are happy to go into any city, any county, any country that we are asked to go and provide our services and support.
Speaker 2:So how are you typically getting the message out Like how do you, you said, when you go anywhere how are people finding out about what you do? How do the people that need your service ultimately connect with you?
Speaker 3:Well, it's amazing because, as a nonprofit, our budget for marketing is never really very big. Over 90% of our resources go directly to the individuals who work with the neurodivergent community and the regular community that integrates with the special one. So people find out about us through word of mouth, through programs like yours, Jeremy. It's. It's very grassroots One family tells another tells another. We have local universities that refer to us, we have local school systems that refer to us, and it really is very organic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would think that that the local schools would be a wonderful resource for you'd be a wonderful resource for them and partnering with them and doing things like that. And then, like you mentioned at the top of the show, community engagement right, really integrating your roots within specific communities, and you said you go anywhere. Where are you based out of like? Is there a primary area for? Is it like mostly broward county? Is it something that you also work with students remotely on? Or do people, do you, need to go to them physically? How does that kind of work for you guys?
Speaker 3:So pretty much yes to everything that you said A little bit of it all. We are able to open micro schools or micro clinics within community private schools, wherever they are. It doesn't cost them nothing to have our micro clinic or our micro school within their facilities and, as a matter of fact, sometimes we can even become a contributing member to those schools. We do have remote services, so for approximately 10 years we've had remote K through 12 school programs as well. We do homeschooling, learning pods wherever these families are situated. We just need a group of five and we're ready to go.
Speaker 3:We can provide therapy services Dayton, broward County. We provide community resources, training, advocacy, consulting anywhere in the United States and in Latin America as well. We have been invited by in our history, by different Latin American countries and by Puerto Rico to take our services there and we will fly a team out for free. We just ask that it not cost us. So if they can offset the cost of the flight, and we just ask that it not cost us. So if they can offset the cost of the flight and house us in somebody's home who's not going to kill us, because usually it's mostly females who travel together but house us and just, and we're happy to spend a week, two weeks and provide intensive training, come back and provide supervision, virtually so. We're mostly Miami-Dade and Broward headquartered, but we go anywhere.
Speaker 2:Now, how long has the foundation been in place? For when did you guys start?
Speaker 3:We started in 2004.
Speaker 2:So it's been quite some time, okay, so, and this is your full-time endeavor, right that you do this.
Speaker 3:No, this is full time and a half. This is uh, my my, yeah, my three uh, natural born children have grown up knowing that there's a fourth, uh, bodiless child, that that belongs to them and that's the foundation, because it goes wherever we go. And, uh, this is my passion, this is. I gave up my teaching career of 20 years actually to be able to dedicate myself to this.
Speaker 2:That was going to be the next question. You know, many times people end up like when they're young they have a passion for something and they end up doing that and making that their life's mission, and then other people start off in something totally different and then pivot midlife. So this for you goes back to pretty much the beginning. Right At what point did you realize that you wanted to be in education?
Speaker 3:I knew that I wanted to be in education since I was a little girl. I used to play with my dolls and pretend that I was a teacher and has a classroom. That was my you know my happy world. And I did. I have two master's degrees in education and I worked for the public school systems for 20 years. I worked for a couple of our local university and college.
Speaker 3:But my world changed when one of my own children was diagnosed with autism and I was told that that child was never going to have a conversation with me, was never really going to have much of a life, and I refused to accept that. So I traveled around the United States, I learned, I trained, I realized that there was so much that could help my child and others, but it wasn't available in Miami, dade County, in Broward County, in South Florida, and I could find little bits and pieces that might help a little bit, but nothing that was really integrated, nothing intensive, nothing inclusive, nothing that prepared her community for her and her for the community. And so it was out of that need that Angels Reach was founded and honestly, I never imagined that it would grow to where it has grown. I thought you know if I could help my child and one other, we've done good. We have since helped over 4,000 individuals, over 4,000 youth in particular.
Speaker 2:What a wonderful story. The transition from education to having a personal experience with your own child and then not finding what you need to create success for your child and just basically creating it out of whole cloth. So my hat's off to you there for sure. That's really, really special. You know, dory, one of the reasons we do this show, it's all about education, right, it's all about informing the community and sharing with folks and helping them learn things that they didn't know. What are some of the biggest? I mean, you've been doing this quite some time now. What are some of the biggest misconceptions, myths, things that people are just confused about when they encounter what you do?
Speaker 3:Well, I think that one of the biggest misconceptions is when people believe that individuals with a special ability or a special need have to be.
Speaker 3:I guess, interacted with separately, that somehow blending a special need student with a regular education or an advanced student is going to be detrimental to one or the other, and that is absolutely the opposite is what is true. There is research that documents and shows how integration and inclusion benefits everyone. So the typically developing or average or high functioning or advanced learner will get to learn leadership skills, compassion, be able to understand how to interact with others who maybe speak a little different or have different needs, and that is a critical, critical skill that is necessary for our future ambassadors, our future politicians, our future doctors, our future policemen, our future, basically, community server, whether it's locally or internationally. That humanity factor is key in developing our relations within our local governments and our international governments. And I think that the second misconception is that an individual that has any special need or neurodivergent needs, such as autism, is going to be stuck in the way that they present themselves long term, that once they reach a certain age, that's it. There's nothing more that can be done. This is the way they're going to be, and, while it is absolutely true that early intervention is key and that if we can start to work with children as young as possible with a fully comprehensive and intensive program, the improvement is much faster the improvement in the sense of attaining the needed skills in communication and socialization and emotional and sensory regulation. But you never stop learning.
Speaker 3:So we have worked with individuals who come to us when they're 30 years old and they've been able to go from a place of dependency to a place where they're able to live very much independently. They might need someone to check in on them or some support independently. They might need someone to check in on them or some support, but, truthfully, don't we all need to have somebody who cares for us, check in on us every once in a while and say, hey, how are you doing? So? We are all different and we're all the same and hopefully we get to spread our message that the fact that someone dresses differently doesn't make eye contact with you. The way that they should perhaps has a different way of communicating doesn't mean that they are cognitively impaired or emotionally stunted or that they need to be isolated. On the contrary, they have so much that the typically developing population can learn from. And I say that kind of hesitantly because, truthfully, I don't know who is fully, 100% typical anymore. I don't know if I am.
Speaker 2:Or any of us 100% typical. We're all humans. There's a big spectrum Really, really interesting stuff. Looking back in my own life, one of the things I've come to realize like when I was younger, I was always looking to avoid pain, struggle, all the things that typically make us great, and so as I've gotten older, I've come to realize that change comes off the back of struggle, right, and the more we learn to deal with that, the more we learn to push through that, the better off we are.
Speaker 2:So there's a lot of things that happened throughout my life where at the time going through it, it felt like it was the end of the world. There was no coming back from it. I was struggling tremendously and, having gotten through that and looking back at it, you often look back at these experiences and are forever grateful and so happy to have gone through that. Is there something that comes to mind throughout your journey, professionally, personally, that fits that bill right, where you were just down in the dump, so to speak, and you didn't think there was any way out, but sitting here today looking back on it, you're again grateful for having gone through that experience.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Actually, there are, as you're speaking, I'm thinking of, several instances in my life where I thought this is I can't handle this, I can't do this, I apologize, I need help. And it's exactly as you say, jeremy once you go through it, you go back and you say I am so grateful to have been able to go through that. And it also, I think, gives you courage when you look forward to say, if I was able to get through that, I can get through this as well and I can help someone else who's going through it get through it as well. As a mother, being told that your child is going to have a very limited life is extremely heartbreaking and you have two choices you either accept it or you fight it. I'm very grateful that I have very stubborn genes that I inherited from my parents and I'm still fighting. But I think that most recently, the foundation has just overcome. We are so grateful.
Speaker 3:We look back at the last three years and we have just summited another peak, because we went through an extreme hardship when we had sacrificed a huge, huge investment. I mean, we saved for years, our board of directors contributed funding and we made a huge sacrifice and we purchased a beautiful property. It's a huge property that we thought was going to be our forever home and unfortunately there were complications that were unexpected, that surprised us, regarding permitting and occupancy and things like that, and we were asked to evacuate our beautiful building after we had received permission to be there. We were asked to evacuate our beautiful building with one day's notice, including, yeah, which meant relocating about 120 special needs students and, yeah, and that was very that would have been difficult for any student, but when you are working with children with autism who require stability and routine, that was an extreme hardship, and for the families as well.
Speaker 3:Most of the families in our schools are very, very low income and so they don't have a lot of resources. But something good always comes out of every challenge. And while we kind of became gypsies and we had to move around multiple times in the last three years, we have found that in the process we have not only reestablished ourselves, but we have reopened again the possibility of doing something we used to do before that we loved, and that is to not just operate our own programs but to offer and open the micro clinics and micro schools in other private schools, and we have started to again receive invitations. Right now we're working with the city of Madrid in Spain. Working with the city of Madrid in Spain, where we have been invited to start a multi-phase program and create, basically, angels Reach satellites in Madrid.
Speaker 2:Why Madrid? Do you have ties to Madrid? What was it that launched that over there?
Speaker 3:So again, everything happens. I think there's a purpose to everything and we didn't seek any of, we never have sought any of our international connections.
Speaker 2:They just come present themselves to you.
Speaker 3:Right. So what happened is that we received a young lady into our school program whose parents were the dad was from Madrid and the mother was from Latin America and their intention was to be here for a year before they returned to Madrid. And the dad happens to work in the medical field for the government of Madrid and he was called back early. So the family had to relocate and the daughter had done extremely well. She had tried two other schools before coming to us and she had experienced bullying and she's very high functioning but just was not accepted, and so she flourished with us and was doing so well, and then the carpet, the floor, was pulled out from underneath them and they had to move back. So they moved back and they started. They found the best of the services for her. She's still regressing.
Speaker 3:So the father, having his connections with the government, proposed that they make an alliance with an American nonprofit organization that has experience and expertise in working with inclusive environments and children with autism, and they loved it.
Speaker 3:And so we're collaborating now with another nonprofit in Madrid and the government in a particular province of Madrid, and we're hoping to establish now in the fall the first phase, which is the creation of specialists over there, because we cannot run.
Speaker 3:The magic of what we do is in our people. We invest in our people, in our trainers and our teachers and our therapists. Our, our therapists and our teachers are not like others, you know. They have their certifications as required, but they have to go through our own training protocols before they ever get to work with one of our children, because we have trademarked systems, trademark methodologies.
Speaker 3:So we're creating a workforce in Madrid and we're starting by training and creating our people, and then the second phase will be to create a micro school and a micro clinic within a particular school that's already been identified and we're negotiating with, and then it'll grow to other private schools. And, very importantly, both in Madrid and here locally, we're working with our local government so that the after-school and summer programs that are offered through the cities can become more truly inclusive, because, while they all accept children with some special needs, usually the children who come to us with special needs are not accepted. Their behaviors are such that make it difficult for them to integrate into general populations unless that population is really well prepared. So we're working to make that possible here locally and in Madrid right now as well.
Speaker 2:Really really appreciate the work you're doing. I love learning all about your story. For our listeners out there that would like to learn more, what is the best way to connect with you guys? Maybe share your website, maybe some social media handles? How can our listeners kind of connect and learn more?
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Thank you, jeremy. So we have two websites, two versions of social media handles, because we have one for the foundation, so it's angelsreachorg is the main website that's for the foundation, and the academy programming has its own separate, so it's angelsreachacademyorg programming has its own separate, so it's angelsreachacademyorg and angelsreachorg and our handles are angelsreachfoundation underscore on Instagram, on Facebook, and angelsreachacademy. And they can always contact us at our main office.
Speaker 2:Very cool, so we will, of course, drop a link in the description to all of that information so we can put this out into the community and spread the message far and wide for what you're doing, because it really it truly is incredible, and I really enjoyed learning about your trajectory, your story and then all the wonderful things that you're doing, not just in our community but really around the world, which is fantastic. So it was great meeting you.
Speaker 3:Thank you, jeremy. It's wonderful meeting you too, and thank you for what you're doing. This podcast is very, very impactful, so thank you.
Speaker 2:I appreciate the feedback and thanks, as always, to our listeners for tuning in and we will catch you all next time on the next episode of the Good Neighbor Podcast. Everyone take care, have a wonderful day.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast Cooper City. To nominate your favorite local business to be featured on the show, go to GNPCooperCitycom. That's GNPCooperCitycom, or call 954-231-3170.