We just finished our third-quarter board meeting. If you’re unfamiliar with our process, we accept applications and meet on a quarterly basis. Prior to each meeting, our review team spends countless hours determining how to fund the requests we’ve received. They then present their recommendations to the full board for approval.
This quarter, for example, we received 61 applications totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars. The review committee has a budget of $25,000 per quarter to allocate.
Almost every quarter, we learn about something new. At this last meeting, we learned about a condition called Kleefstra Syndrome, which significantly impacts speech. It is caused by a deletion at the end of a chromosome.
Our applicants had received extensive early speech therapy focused on chewing, swallowing, and feeding. At birth, his parents were told to “assume he will never speak.” Today, he is enrolled in a preschool program with an IEP, receiving speech therapy, occupational therapy, and physical therapy. His speech therapy now focuses on expanding his vocabulary, building sentences, and improving intelligibility. Way to go, parents! Both parents work while also caring for him and his sibling. We were thrilled to award this family their full request for private speech therapy, once a week, for a year.
As I’ve said many times before, this is why we do what we do at The Orange Effect Foundation. Early intervention works.
