On July 8th, AYLUS Pearland held their first volunteer training for the special needs day camp, Camp for All. This camp, sponsored and organized by BACH (Brazoria Association for Citizens of Handicaps), AYLUS Pearland, and Light and Salt Association’s Special Needs Care Center, hopes to become a long-term project which would be offered to the special needs community every summer in the future. There were around 50 attendees that showed up for this training at the Pearland Westside Library conference room. At the beginning of the training, Sharon He, the director of LSA Special Needs Care Center, introduced her organization and shared her experience in working with special needs. Then, everyone patiently observed and listened to the guest speakers from BACH, Carla Castillo, the Director of BACH ECI and Sandy Le, a BACH Speech Pathologist, to present how to actively include and care for the kids with special needs. All the volunteers improved both their social skills and ability to stay patient. It was planned to last from 4-6 PM but due to the welcoming interest of all the volunteers, the participants stayed an extra 30 minutes after the designated time. Everyone learned how to work together and practiced numerous scenarios that they wouldn’t have gotten the opportunity to do on a daily basis.
To better understand how it felt, the guest speakers came up with scenarios that could possibly happen during the day camp for all the participants. A volunteer from each group got the opportunity to practice what they just learned. Everyone thought it was really interesting to formulate their own problem solving ideas. Near the end of the training, Iris Chen, the president of the Art to Heart association and a member of AYLUS Pearland, came up and introduced their organization. AYLUS Pearland is thankful for all the speakers plus the Pearland Chinese Church Youth group for the snacks and drinks.
AYLUS project lead that planned the meeting (July 5th 6-7 PM): Thomas Liang, Eric Qi, Edwin Ling, Andy Jiang, William Sun, Alexander Sun, Wendy Yin, Chen Wang
Training participants（4:00 -6:30 PM）: Rita Chang, Alex Dai, Grace Dai, Tina Dong, Erica Gao, Enny Gong, Amy Hardcastle, Aila Jiang, Leo Jiang, Winnie Jiang, Joshua Le, Justin Le, Serena Lee, Carol Li, Kara Li, Edwin Ling, Kate Liu, Zixuan Liu, Ziyuan (Ella) Lu, Jayden Lu, Sophia Fu, Thomas Liang, Callie Meng, Christine Nguyen, Jason Nguyen, Madison Nguyen, Jonathan Niu, Matthew Niu, Elaine Pham, Hien Pham, Eric Qi, Alexander Sun, William Sun, Jerry Tong, Chen Wang, Zhi Ran Wang, Karen Xu, Wendy Yin, Kang Zhang, Alvin Zheng, Abigail Zheng, Jordan Zheng, Abigail Zhu, Derek Zhu, Matthew Nguyen
Flyer design Alexander Sun and Edwin Ling
Sign-up sheet Google form/Waiver: William Sun and Thomas Liang
Set up and clean up: William Sun, Alexander Sun, Wendy Yin, Thomas Liang, Eric Qi, Edwin Ling
Reported by: Wendy Yin
