Tell us about your project

Tai Chi for the Blind and Visually Impaired. We successfully launched our first (of two) twelve-week series that will conclude at the end of April.                  

How has the grant positively impacted your organization or community?

We have had consistent attendance and a positive response from the community. We asked participants to complete a mid-workshop survey and received positive feedback and constructive suggestions.       

What specific obstacles have you faced during the implementation of the project and how did you overcome those challenges and learn from them? If no specific challenges, put N/A.

Initial enrollment was about 18 people, but constant attendance is about seven per class. This was anticipated, and we have contacted those who did not continue with the class but have had little feedback from them. We plan to adjust the class for the next sequence to hopefully boost class retention, such as different class times and instruction modifications.

If applicable, how have you engaged and involved the community or stakeholders in the project?

We have also had phone calls and constant communications with students and our community partners.

How have you measured the success of your project, and what are the key performance indicators?

We are measuring success through mid and end-workshop surveys. Key performance indicators are class retention, participant satisfaction, and improvement of well-being and perceived health.             

Are there any key partnerships or collaborations that have played a significant role in your project?

San Francisco Lighthouse for the Blind has been a key partner.

End of the year updates:

Reached 60 people. Had a positive response from the community and will continue to look for further funding sources.

Tell us about your project

We already have a program in a dual language (ASL/spoken English) school and a deaf educator. We also hired the deaf educator as a consultant and asked her to reimagine our workshops and programming for a deaf audience.

How has the grant positively impacted your organization or community?

The deaf community is vibrant but underserved by nonprofits that do not focus specifically on disability. Most nonprofits do not have deaf educators and ASL interpreters, and content needs revision if it involves working with hands and speaking simultaneously or sharing ideas out loud. As a result, deaf youth lack access to enrichment activities and school field trips. 

Gardening, in particular, is an activity that deaf students can access without boundaries, and City Growers has had great success in our Garden Residency at the ASL public school. This grant allowed us to take the residency one step further, creating opportunities for the youth to come on field trips to our farm and access the hands-on, experiential workshops that excite kids about nature. 

This workshop foundation will allow us to market ASL workshops to deaf students throughout New York City and even to schools visiting New York from other states and abroad. 

What specific obstacles have you faced during the implementation of the project and how did you overcome those challenges and learn from them? If no specific challenges, put N/A.

Scaling our plans to fit the grant has been our major challenge. We ended up in a different place than when we applied for the grant.

We intend to continue working on broad accessibility and universal access, but it will be a longer and more costly process than we thought. This conclusion, however, is not a setback. It is a challenge for us to deliver better for everyone.

If applicable, how have you engaged and involved the community or stakeholders in the project?

We have promoted our deaf educator to consultant status and given her broad freedom to create this program, making use of our vast educational resources, curriculum standards, and anti-bias and nature-based frameworks. She is highly connected to the deaf community and creating this is a way to share her love for nature and gardening. She has already started outreach to other schools and programs to build stakeholder awareness and backing.

How have you measured the success of your project, and what are the key performance indicators?

Evaluation allows us to be responsive to the changing needs of the communities we serve and offer programming that meets these needs – it is how we determined the need for deaf/ASL enrichment programs. We also understand that success is not defined by numbers but by metrics that are intangible and often unmeasurable. As such, we rely on ways to establish metrics and determine project results, both quantitative and qualitative.

Each workshop has questions interwoven into the conversations designed to measure knowledge with a show of hands and with open-ended questions. The questions are related to the topic of the workshop. While often an imperfect measure, this gives us a baseline understanding of where the young people are with their knowledge of compost, pollinators and nature. At the end of the program season, educators aggregate this data and feedback into a reflection document and use the evaluations to recalibrate the program from year to year. These questions will be ASL-compatible in our new workshops.

Beyond what our surveys tell us, our educators have seen the impact these programs have on students and teachers. Students naturally unwind upon coming outside, and the opportunity to move their bodies and use their senses brings out smiles and laughter. We hear enthusiastic quotes about how students are no longer afraid of worms or that they didn’t know lettuce could be so good when fresh. At the ASL school, we had educators fill out surveys, and many shared stories of how students became protective of their plants and opened up upon going outside. We believe that this type of connection to the outdoors is the performance indicator.           

Are there any key partnerships or collaborations that have played a significant role in your project?

Yes, our relationship with P.S. 347, The ASL School and our ASL Consultant Virginia Shou.

End of the year updates:

Reached 210 people. We believe the project is sustainable and look forward to growing our outreach and impact numbers. City Growers has made site improvements, purchased materials and engaged our educators in training, so our methodology and curriculum for youth with disabilities is on stable ground. Having more ASL-fluent educators on staff would help with the sustainability of this project, and having grant funding to support deaf specific education would allow us to do that training and hiring.

Tell us about your project

We have hosted a fall season and a winter season and will be starting our spring season soon. We have had 35-45 athletes participate in each season. We also participated in the second annual All Starz (adapted field hockey) National Showcase in March 2024! We had four teams competing at this event!          

How has the grant positively impacted your organization or community?

This grant has allowed us to continue to keep costs to athletes low. We were also able to give scholarships to athletes in need to continue their participation. We purchased team shirts/uniform tops for all athletes who participated in the All-Starz Showcase. We also held an ice cream social after practice in the fall to allow for organic conversations and fun off the field.       

What specific obstacles have you faced during the implementation of the project and how did you overcome those challenges and learn from them? If no specific challenges, put N/A.

N/A

If applicable, how have you engaged and involved the community or stakeholders in the project?

We regularly seek feedback (formally and informally) from our athletes with disabilities and their family members throughout and at the end of the season. We involve athletes with disabilities on our leadership team.

How have you measured the success of your project, and what are the key performance indicators?

We have grown the number of athletes participating each season! We also have a very high retention rate or percentage of athletes who play each season. We regularly receive positive testimonials from athletes and their families. Our main outcome measurements are the number of athletes participating, the number of new athletes and percent retention of previous athletes.     

Are there any key partnerships or collaborations that have played a significant role in your project?

Partnering with local school districts and our local club team (PA Revs) helps us recruit high school buddies and athletes. Partnering with a local non-profit, 3.21 for Life, helps us connect with individuals with Down syndrome and grow our team.

End of the year updates:

We directly reached and impacted approximately 70 unique athlete with disabilities, 70 middle and high school-aged volunteers, and 15 adult volunteers over the past year! By extension, we also impacted their families. Pa Revs believes the project is sustainable and have been able to apply for and receive additional grant funding over the past year.

Tell us about your project

As of the mid-year report: Since beginning this project in October 2023, we’ve facilitated 9 fitness classes including 5 virtual classes and 4 in-person classes:

• 10/30/23 Halloween Fitness with Alyssa Gialamas (virtual)
• 11/27/23 Give Thanks Seated Yoga with Sheila Luellen (virtual)
• 12/13/23 Holiday Seated Dance and Movement Class with ComMotion (virtual)
• 1/29/24 Fitness with Alyssa Gialamas (virtual)
• 2/7, 2/14, 2/21, & 2/28/24 Fitness for Function Program with Sheila Grant (in-person)
• 3/14/24 Seated Dance and Movement Class with ComMotion (virtual).

28 unique individuals have participated in these classes (our initial goal was 20), 62 experiences have been delivered and average attendance at each program has been 7 people.

How has the grant positively impacted your organization or community?

This grant has allowed us to implement ongoing virtual and in-person fitness programming for individuals with physical disabilities and visual impairments living in Virginia. Sportable is a statewide leader in adaptive sports and recreation, but this grant has provided more entry-level opportunities for people with disabilities in our community to get active through fitness programming. 

What specific obstacles have you faced during the implementation of the project and how did you overcome those challenges and learn from them? If no specific challenges, put N/A.

Due to delays in finalizing our formal agreement, we did not officially start fitness classes until October. We initially planned to facilitate monthly fitness classes for the grant year of August through July – 12 classes in total, so the delayed start put us behind. However, we were able to catch up by hosting a 4-week Fitness for Function in-person series in February. Participants really enjoyed that series, and we plan to repeat it later this year.

If applicable, how have you engaged and involved the community or stakeholders in the project?

Our Health & Wellness Outcomes Manager, Caitlyn Berry, who leads this program and all of our Wellness Initiatives, actively seeks participant feedback through formal and informal methods, including conversations during and after programs as well as feedback surveys. After program participants shared how much they enjoyed a special holiday-themed virtual dance and movement class in December, Caitlyn worked with the instructor to have them teach another similar class in March. Caitlyn is also working to coordinate the instructor to come to teach an in-person dance and movement class later this year. At the end of each Fitness for Function class held in February, Caitlyn and the instructor asked each participant to share their favorite exercise of the day during the cool down. This information guided the following week’s exercise plan. Caitlyn has maintained open channels of communication with all participants in these programs and made decisions for future programming based on their feedback.

How have you measured the success of your project, and what are the key performance indicators?

Per our initial application, we aimed to serve 20 unique participants, see positive changes in Godin Leisure Time Exercise Questionnaire (GLTE) Scores for at least 50% of participants who attended four or more classes, and receive ratings of at least 90% satisfaction on program feedback surveys. We’ve already exceeded our participation goal, having 28 unique participants across our nine fitness classes to date. We’ve had six participants join us for at least four classes but are still analyzing their GLTE scores. We’ll report on those scores in our final report. We’ve received a 45% response rate on our feedback surveys after every fitness program. Responses to feedback surveys indicate a 96% satisfaction rate. The “unsatisfied” ratings have been reviewed and addressed as we work to continue to improve our programs. Notable comments from feedback surveys include “moving together with a group of people [was my favorite part of this class]” and “I learned new movements I can incorporate,” both of which relate to the key impacts we hope to have through this program – promoting social connection and empowering people with disabilities to become more physically active.            

Are there any key partnerships or collaborations that have played a significant role in your project?

We’ve partnered with two fitness instructors with disabilities to teach several of the virtual classes. Alyssa Gialamas, founder of Adapt Move Gain (AMG) Fitness and former Paralympian with arthrogryposis, taught a Halloween-themed fitness class in October and another virtual fitness class in January. Sheila Luellen, an experienced chair yoga instructor with Spinal Cord Injury (SCI), taught a gratitude-themed yoga class around Thanksgiving in November and is scheduled to teach another virtual yoga class for us in May. Additionally, we partnered with ComMotion, a non-profit based out of North Carolina to have them teach two seated virtual dance and movement classes that have received rave reviews from our participants!

End of the year updates:

We facilitated 14 fitness classes including 7 virtual classes and 7 in-person classes. 40 unique individuals with disabilities participated in these classes and 94 fitness experiences were delivered. Participant disabilities included:

• Spinal Cord Injuries/Disorders
• Multiple Sclerosis
• Stroke/Brain Injury
• Cerebral Palsy
• Amputation
• Blindness
• Musculoskeletal Conditions

96% of participants responded that they were satisfied with their overall experience in fitness class(es) with 88% responding that they were “very satisfied.”

Participant survey comments included:

• “Great program I get stronger each time thank you”
• “I appreciated the specific direction that helped me stretch muscles I definitely neglect on a normal basis. I was a little sore the next day. In a good way!”
• “I loved this class! Sometimes chair yoga is not actually geared toward disabled people, and I so appreciated having the practice clearly designed for us.”
• “ [My favorite part about this class was] being able to do some activities that I didn’t think I could do.”

This NCHPAD micro-grant provided us with funding to purchase a variety of fitness equipment that we can now use across future fitness programming. We also found facilities that were willing to let us use their space for fitness classes without charging the usual fee, based on our community impact. Besides Sportable staff and operational costs, which will continue to be funded through other sources, our main cost to continuing this program will be instructor fees. We have found some instructors who are willing to teach in the future free of charge. We will explore and utilize other funding sources to fund other instructors.

Tell us about your project

The project started off to a slow start as we had to pivot our strategy. However, we are now in full swing. We are actively working with a video content editor for our video education series. We are focusing on optimizing the first video on weight management.

How has the grant positively impacted your organization or community?

Thanks to this grant, we’ve enhanced our educational content to reach the constituents who require it most, using the most efficient delivery methods available. Without this funding, disseminating valuable educational material would be constrained. Furthermore, we anticipate this project will offer valuable insights into how Spina Bifida Association (SBA) can better engage with the Spina Bifida community to share essential information.    

What specific obstacles have you faced during the implementation of the project and how did you overcome those challenges and learn from them? If no specific challenges, put N/A.

This project has introduced new challenges for our organization. We’re learning to collaborate with a video content editor to bring our ideas to life. While we’re skilled in creating Spina Bifida resources, presenting technical information in a way that engages our audience is unfamiliar territory. Through open discussions with the editor, we’ve provided a clear outline of our goals, empowering them to create content that meets our criteria.

If applicable, how have you engaged and involved the community or stakeholders in the project?

Before starting our project, there was a significant portion of stakeholder and community engagement. Throughout 2023, we actively involved the Spina Bifida community to determine their preferred methods of accessing educational content and resources. Building upon this feedback, we initiated the project to tailor existing educational presentations to better align with their preferences. Furthermore, the selection of educational content topics stemmed from a thorough community survey to identify areas of great need among our constituents.

How have you measured the success of your project, and what are the key performance indicators?

We’re currently finalizing and presenting the initial piece of educational content; thus we lack metrics regarding viewership or participation at this stage. However, a key performance indicator is our successful integration of community survey data into our project strategy. This ensures that the final product prioritizes the needs of our community.  

Are there any key partnerships or collaborations that have played a significant role in your project?

Yes, the primary partner in this project is our video content editor. They are tasked with understanding our community, their needs, Spina Bifida-related educational content and adapting our video series to match these factors.

End of the year updates:

• Average views per YouTube video: 200
• Average Facebook views: 1,360
• Email distribution of content: 25,000

We will continue to produce educational content as we have time and resources available. Additional funding to edit the videos and develop promotional materials would be beneficial in creating new content.

Tell us about your project

The New York Erie Canalway Trail provides ADA-compliant, accessible and inclusive recreation and leisure opportunities. This project will create virtual Peloton-style adapted cycling and kayaking videos along the canalway to promote local awareness of adapted cycling, virtual fitness opportunities and encourage in-person use of canalway trails. A printable social story will accompany a video feature of adapted equipment rentals to increase knowledge and confidence in engaging in community-based recreation along the Erie Canalway. This project directly addresses a community-identified need and represents an important step toward health and leisure equity. Thus far, I have secured my videographer and graphic designer partnerships for this project. I’ve worked with the videographers to outline a format for each video, developed an intro to each video and chosen the virtual miles segments that we will be filming this spring. Together, we have selected a total of eleven 1-mile segments, of which five will be bicycle point-of-view, and six will be kayak point-of-view. I am in the early stages of beginning to outline the social story that will accompany the videos, making for twelve total videos planned for this project, plus a printable social story.         

How has the grant positively impacted your organization or community?

This grant will allow for the creation of virtual opportunities to access many beautiful segments of the Erie Canalway throughout Monroe County, promoting recreation and leisure opportunities for all individuals. Adding a social story will provide added support to build capacity and confidence for individuals and families to access the Canalway recreationally through adaptive equipment rentals with one of our community partners, Erie Canal Boat Company. The impact of this project will be felt not only within our immediate community but also across Upstate New York.        

What specific obstacles have you faced during the implementation of the project and how did you overcome those challenges and learn from them? If no specific challenges, put N/A.

The biggest obstacle for our team, thus far, has been logistics in the grant purchasing agreement process. Although we have a long history of managing grant funding, the process for this grant has been different, requiring different individuals within the larger university setting to approve the funding and be involved in the process. Along the way, since it was outside our normal workflow, we had some difficulty keeping track of the process. We have learned from this and now have developed knowledge of new university contacts and our various workflows should we have grant funding that uses the same purchasing agreement process in the future. 

Within the project, I haven’t faced many barriers yet, except for the typical hurdles of emails getting filtered into spam boxes and having reinforced the importance of trying to connect again if I don’t receive a timely response when initiating a connection with a community organization. The completion of much of this project depends on better weather in Upstate New York as we are filming outside. We are proactively addressing this potential time obstacle by trying to prep as much planning ahead of time as possible.       

If applicable, how have you engaged and involved the community or stakeholders in the project?

Community partners have been engaged with this project from conception. Our videographers and graphic designers are community partners with whom I’ve been directly working with to plan each step of the project. My other community partners, Rochester Accessible Adventures and Erie Canal Boat Company, will be more involved in helping to review the product once filming and design are complete, as well as engaging in the filming/photos for the video segment that will accompany the social story. Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor will be involved once the product is completed to upload the videos into the Canalway Challenge and assist with promotion. I’m also working with several individuals in our clinical department and community to get input and feedback on the social story aspect of this project.   

How have you measured the success of your project, and what are the key performance indicators?

We have not yet been able to do any measurement for success as this project is still in the process of development of the deliverable videos/social story. We are limited by Upstate New York weather and need to wait for the spring to come, the canal to be filled with water, and foliage to bloom so that we capture visually appealing point-of-view pictures. We plan to measure the success of the project by using data analytics of video views on the Erie Canalway Challenge website, logged virtual first miles through the Canalway Challenge, views of resources through website/social media promotion by our organization and community partners, and number of printed social stories distributed onsite at the Erie Canal Boat Company. We plan to administer satisfaction surveys to stakeholders.     

Are there any key partnerships or collaborations that have played a significant role in your project?

At this point, the biggest collaboration has been with the videographers as we have been working together to identify segments and logistics of filming. They have been incredibly knowledgeable and thoughtful about seeing my vision for the project and ensuring we capture the breadth of the canalway across the region. They have enhanced my ideas and have been significant in the development. I expect that my other partnerships and collaborations will be just as critical once I’m in that phase of the project that they are involved with. Partnership is key, and I certainly would not have been able to do this work without the dedication of the community partners and the support of this grant to fund their project collaboration. 

End of the year updates:

This project will be sustained through our own organization’s ongoing promotion of the final products and ongoing promotion through our community partners. In particular, this project will be supported as part of the annual Erie Canalway Challenge sponsored by the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor. While this Canalway Challenge is available year-round, they do a greater push in the summer months, with community activities and awareness efforts throughout the summer across the Erie Canal that runs through Upstate NY. The videos and social stories will be shown on their website for virtual miles and within the promotion of accessible miles opportunities. Our other community partners will also engage in sustainable promotion. Internally, the Strong Center for Developmental Disabilities will continue to promote the video and social story on web platforms and within our clinic’s family library.

Tell us about your project

Kennett Outdoors has: 

• Developed an online short course including six of the total anticipated nine modules – Stories, Outcomes, Practices, Take Your First Walks, Find Your Next Path, and Create Weekly Fun and Adventure
• Developed an online self-assessment to help planning walks and setting goals
• Systematically surveyed paved and gravel paths in the region to create a map of paths that are likely to meet universal access standards
• Contacted a wide range of schools and community-based providers. 

We have also coordinated with Kennett Outdoors, Kennett Library and Anson B. Nixon Park to integrate a guided walk for families of young children as part of a collaboration between the YMCA’s annual Healthy Kids Day and Kennett Library’s newly established Health Literacy program. It includes a presentation to the community about the health benefits of walking. The program has attracted many local business and non-profit groups as collaborators. But so far, we have only had a handful of families and teachers contact us for more information, have had only three agencies request a workshop and have yet to be asked to provide coaching. We have since created a short course to offer parents and professionals with limited availability a quick way to get started.     

How has the grant positively impacted your organization or community?

The grant helped Kennett Outdoors open doors with a wide range of local and state agencies to raise awareness about the potential for people with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDDs) to benefit from greater support. For example, Kennett Outdoors has since been invited to present to land conservancies across the country on ways to increase the inclusion of people with disabilities in land conservation and access to paths and trails. Kennett Outdoors was also one of about 20 non-governmental organizations to be invited by the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources to help draft Pennsylvania’s next 5-year outdoor recreation plan.           

What specific obstacles have you faced during the implementation of the project and how did you overcome those challenges and learn from them? If no specific challenges, put N/A.

The community of school and adult service agencies that provide virtually all of the publicly-funded direct support to people with developmental disabilities hasn’t fully recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic. In Pennsylvania – as across the nation – the tremendous stress created during lockdowns, the inflation that followed and the slow response of agencies to increase wages has led to a massive exodus of direct support staff. These staff shortages have led schools and adult service agencies to scale back on new community outings – and in some cases, to close entirely. Staff shortages among the latter directly impact families, who we suspect are also reluctant to introduce new activities as they scramble to find coverage. The short course we created was intended to offer parents and professionals with limited availability a quick way to get started.

If applicable, how have you engaged and involved the community or stakeholders in the project?

Kennett Outdoors has contacted directly the full range of service providers through blogs, emails, presentations and face-to-face meetings. 

How have you measured the success of your project, and what are the key performance indicators?

Given the limited response, we have yet to measure key indicators. We will survey respondents regarding their experiences.          

Are there any key partnerships or collaborations that have played a significant role in your project?

Pre-existing relationships with local schools, adult service agencies and advocacy groups have been very helpful in spreading the word about the program.

End of the year updates:

The project has been very successful in generating interest in the health benefits of nature walks for people with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD). Since the project’s inception, Kennett Outdoors has conducted presentations promoting the health benefits for people with IDD of walking in nature generally or the Fresh Air Self Care for All curriculum specifically at multiple meetings and conferences.

• More than 80 attendees (self-advocates with IDD or their case managers/staff) at two local training events here in Chester County
• More than 30 attendees (staff and leaders of Pennsylvania Land Conservancies) at the WeConservePA September 2023 annual meeting; more than 60 attendees (educators; staff and leaders of conservancies) at the annual national conferences of the Land Trust Alliance and the Ohio Center for Autism and Low Incidence education association.

More generally, we believe that the training program has been very successful in promoting the inclusion of people with disabilities in other health-related activities – for example, Kennett Outdoors was invited to participate as one of three organizations representing the interests of people with disabilities in developing the next five-year Statewide Comprehensive Outdoor Recreation Plan for Pennsylvania.

As a result, at least one of the 20 or so goals established statewide for the next five years will address increased access to facilities and programs in parks and preserves for people with disabilities. Since creating the self-directed training option for Fresh Air Self-Care for All, we no longer have a way to directly count the number of people who have completed the course. Still, we can count the number of unique visitors to the project home page (https://www.kennettoutdoors.org/fresh-air-self-care-for-all) and the six individual story maps that make up the self-directed course.

The number of unique visitors since April 2023 ranges from 280 (project home page) to 560 (Storymap – Stories of Outdoor Adventure). However, to date, we have had no one reach out in search of the individualized coaching funded for this grant. We believe that this is related to well-documented shortages in the kinds of direct care staff support needed to ensure weekly walks in nature. Advocacy organizations have documented very high vacancy rates for direct care staffing positions resulting from the failure to ensure that wages kept pace with inflation. We expect that vacancy rates will soon begin to decrease after the advocacy of parent groups (including those affiliated with Kennett Outdoors) resulted in a $400M increase in the state budget for adults with IDD waivers, which will translate into 8-12% increase in wages beginning October 1st. We expect increased interest in walking programs as the staffing shortages abate. It is also worth noting that the YMCA’s involvement in the program helped to sustain momentum for very significant investments in adaptive programming across the region.

The Fresh Air Self Care FOR ALL program operated by Kennett Outdoor itself is sustainable – we will follow up with area school districts and adult service providers to invite them to complete the coursework independently or to invite us to complete an on-site workshop free of charge. 

We will also continue to ensure access to coaching through Kennett Outdoors as part of our broader efforts to encourage participation in adaptive outdoor recreation. These other efforts have included, for example, individualized coaching to utilize specialized bicycle trailers.

Our goal is to document these experiences as case studies to share via Kennett Outdoors blogs and to utilize in training to illustrate the benefits of walking and other outdoor adaptive recreation activities. We will initially limit individualized coaching through Kennett Outdoors to no more than 2-4 hours per week. If the demand increases, we have the capacity within Kennett Outdoors to raise funds, increase coaching and remain interested in partnering with the YMCA should the increased demand outstrip our own capacity.