This post originally published on The Orange Effect Foundation blog on January 26, 2016. Due to its popularity, we are reposting it here for you. The Orange Effect Foundation (OEF) officially launched last spring, but its story began more than a decade ago, when Joe and Pam’s first-born son, Joshua, was diagnosed with autism. In those days, Pam was a stay-at-home mom with a healthy baby …
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Ensuring a Path To Success For Everyone
In 1975, two 20-somethings, Brian Daw and Anne McEvoy started Cornucopia, Inc., a non-profit in Cleveland, Ohio. Cornucopia was created to help people with disabilities develop skills and confidence leading to sustainable employment. Over their tenure opening and running The Bin in Lakewood’s Birdtown neighborhood, they helped hundreds and hundreds of young adults live, work and thrive in their …
A Letter To a Friend
Dear Kayla, Hello, my name is Mike. I'm so glad you are an Orange Effect Foundation grant recipient! I know someone who also received speech therapy. He was a young boy when he started going to sessions, probably about your age, and last year he graduated from high school with honors. He now goes to college! I’ll bet you will do big things too. My job is to help The Orange Effect raise money …
The Best Speech Therapy Example Is No Example At All
At The Orange Effect Foundation, the board does an amazing job of contributing to the newsletter and blog. It’s important to our business model and the community. This week, of course, is my turn. And as such, I was sitting at lunch with my oldest son asking him what he thought I should write. It went like this: Me – What should I write for OEF this week? Son – I don’t …
Who Inspires You? We Want To Know!
I’ve run across a lot of feel good articles this week. It amazes me what people can accomplish and to be honest, I often envy their constant upbeat mood and never ending drive. I realize too, that most of these folks just don’t get enough credit. So we would love to highlight some of them here at The Orange Effect Foundation. Here’s some I ran across this week! Dylan …
Normalizing Diversity and Winning the Internet
Make sure you have a few hours before you read this post. Have you heard of Chris Ulmer? He was featured in this blog post from The Tilt. He is extraordinary because although no publishers were interested in his book idea, he found a way to grow his content empire. Chris started as a special education teacher. In a video from 2015, he is seen giving compliments to his students and it went …
Speech Language Therapist Appreciation Day
The month of May brings so many things--signs of summer, graduations, weddings, and so much more. May is also Better Hearing and Speech Month. Part of that is Speech Language Therapist (SLP) Appreciation day on May 18. SLPs are VERY important to us here at the Orange Effect Foundation. One example of this is that every application is required to involve a therapist who is certified by the …
The Cure For Autism
(Okay, okay, there really isn't a medical one.) “I would have never guessed he had autism.” “How long has he had autism?” “Is he cured?” I have talked with other parents a lot about these questions. They are a compliment mostly. If someone meets my son for the first time and can’t ‘tell’ he’s autistic that’s good, right? The whole goal since he was two years old was to provide …
Why I Am Grateful To Famous People Who Speak Out
I was recently sent this Yahoo article in which actress Holly Robinson Peete shares that her 19-year-old son is autistic. The article focuses on her advocacy which is so important in our society. It’s an unfair pressure to put on a celebrity, but one that, in this case, Holly has taken in stride. She talks in the article about the impact of the pandemic. Specifically, that her autistic …
“Symptoms” of Autism – A Focus on the Positive
I was writing a blog post about how autism is never cured. People with autism learn to adjust to societal norms and they learn, in a way, how to rewire their brain for themselves so that they can be successful. But they are never cured. In doing that research, I came across this image, one I had never seen before, and it blew me away. What a wonderful truth to be put into words. …
Raising An Autistic Son: Four Things I’d Change
This post was originally published on the Orange Effect blog on August 17, 2017. Due to its popularity, we are reposting it here for you. My son is a successful sophomore in high school and I wouldn’t change a single thing about him now. He was diagnosed with Autism at age two and received countless hours of speech and occupational therapy to get where we are today. Often as he goes …
Finding the Strengths in Special Needs
A friend shared a great article from the Washington Post with me today. It was one of those articles that as a mom, had me tearing up a bit. Additionally as a person who is on social media (at least reading, not necessarily posting) I was so surprised not to hear about this sooner. A young man, with the help of his Dad, created a profile on LinkedIn and after several drafts, posted a …
