About a year ago in Chester, Penn., a group of individuals started a supermarket. However, this wasn’t just any grocery store: Fare & Square is the first non-profit one in the country.
Twelve years ago, the last supermarket in Chester (a city about 15 miles from Philadelphia, where 31 percent of its residents live below the poverty line and the median income is $27,546) closed its doors, leaving residents with few food options. As a result, more and more residents relied on Philabundance, a Philadelphia-based food bank, but fewer and fewer donations were coming in. So Philabundance president and executive director Bill Clark realized that something needed to be done.
“We knew that Chester was a market in need,” Clark tells Next City. “When everybody can’t get food at a grocery store and goes to emergency food cupboards, that’s not a very good, effective way to deal with the problem, either.”
His solution? Fare & Square — a supermarket that will provide a wide variety of healthy options, as well as host special events where Chester residents can receive health screenings.
With a year under its belt, Fare & Square is now assessing its progress. So far, it’s been slow-coming as the owners try to adjust their products to fit their clients’ needs, which must strike a balance between healthy options and ones that are affordable.
Fare & Square’s managing director Paul Messina remains optimistic and views the situation as trial–and–error.
“It’s Fare & Square 1,” Messina says to Next City. “We’re still trying to do our best to keep our cost of goods down for the community, and we are making changes. We’re looking very, very closely at the product mix that we currently have in the store and seeing what we can continue to sell at what prices. We do feel that we’re going to need to eliminate some items that cost more money than we’re able to sell at a good cost for the community.”
For a community without much, Fare & Square is demonstrating that all sorts of possibilities are possible, thanks to food.
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Tag: Family
The Private School Education That Doesn’t Cost a Dime
Cristo Rey Columbus High School isn’t like other schools.
As part of the 28 schools forming the Cristo Rey network (founded in 1995 in Chicago by Jesuit priest John P. Foley), this Columbus, Ohio private school takes underprivileged kids and gives them the opportunity to learn and work professionally for free.
Initially, a full year’s tuition at Cristo Rey Columbus costs $18,000, according to the Atlantic, but after the school reaches capacity, the price tag drops to around $12,000 to $13,000. And then with a little more finagling, students pay basically nothing.
How is this possible?
First off, Ohio offers a voucher program (worth $5,000 each year) for students to attend another school if the one closest to them is deemed a “failing school.” Fifty-nine percent of Cristo Rey Columbus students are eligible. Additionally, the school offers the unique Professional Work Study Program. For five days a month (one day a week and two days every fourth week), students can work for one of the school’s partner companies or institutions earning about $6,500 a year, which goes straight towards tuition.
Opening in 2013, Cristo Rey Columbus began its inaugural year with 85 students, and this year’s class boasts 117. All come from financially-needy homes where the average income is $35,000 per year. So far, the school has found success: 100 percent of the 2014 graduates were accepted to college.
The school’s faculty is handpicked for their teaching skills and belief in the Cristo Rey mission that education will break the cycle of poverty. As a result, teachers are dedicated to helping the students succeed in the workplace by helping them prep for interviews, offering tips on dressing and giving basic training.
For school Director James Ragland, the hope is that this experience will bolster the students for the future.
“We don’t use the word ‘fear’. We prefer ‘opportunity’,” he tells the Atlantic. “The majority of their day is with us. The message [of a culture of positivity] is delivered in context from the janitor on down (sic) to the president.”
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When Its Only Grocery Store Closed Its Doors, This Town Didn’t Have to Look Far for New Owners
What do you do when your local supermarket closes? For one town, it means you open your own community-owned store.
When the local Winn Dixie shut its doors in northeast Greensboro, N.C. in the 1990s, the area became a barren food desert. For the past 15 years, residents have been waiting for another grocery story to fill the void, according to Yes! magazine, but none came. The community isn’t big enough to satiate the needs of a large shareholder corporation, which has acted as a deterrent for other chain stores.
Left without access to food for too long, the community took the matter into their own hands and started researching. After exploring various options, it decided to form a grocery store cooperative.
Starting next year, northeast Greensboro residents will have access to a store that will provide them quality food as well as well-paid jobs. All workers at the Renaissance Community Cooperative will be paid more than minimum wage, starting at $10 per hour.
There’s a common belief about co-ops that they work best in more affluent communities. However, northeast Greensboro is a low-income and predominantly African-American community, so with the start of the cooperative, the town is looking to break that stereotype.
While the results and success of the co-op remain to be seen, right now it can be viewed as a positive step in the right direction. And, if it does become successful, it will serve as an example and model for other low-income areas to follow.
It goes just to show what positives can come from what first seem to be a devastating event.
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How Digital Tools Are Helping In the Fight for Gender Equality
Courtney Martin set her iPhone down where she could see it. She had to keep an eye out for a possible text from her husband, who was with their daughter at the bed and breakfast where the family of three was staying while in Camden, Maine.
Martin, an author, speaker and activist, was in town for PopTech 2014, a social impact conference that drew 600 creatives together around the theme of rebellion. As a new mother, Martin arrived at the Camden Opera House with a different perspective than the one she had on stage a few years earlier for her popular TED talk, which focused on feminism and drew on the way her own mother inspired her path to where she is today.
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During that talk, Martin said that we need a range of people and solutions to advance the work of the mothers and grandmothers who have worked so hard to make life better for their children and grandchildren.
In an interview with NationSwell about the solutions that excite her most, the editor emerita of Feministing.com started by pointing to the way the web has created a cost for sexism.
“We’ve really figured out how to get people galvanized, in a sense shaming sexist actors into changing,” she says. The innovation in digital tools, such as online petitions and apps like Hollaback! (which has partnered with New York City to allow victims of sexual harassment to upload their experiences in real time versus dealing with the process of filing a formal complaint) is providing new and more effective ways to battle anything that falls short of equal treatment.
But now, Martin says that the question is how to keep that engagement going beyond the click of a button. “We need some kind of larger strategic goal and plan and way to work together collectively.”
Organizations taking us in the right direction include UltraViolet, a community that launches campaigns for equality — from petitioning congressional representatives to reauthorize and expand the Violence Against Women Act to organizing a rally that was part of what led Facebook to name the first woman to its board of directors.
Martin also points to Make It Work, a community committed to the idea that Americans should not have to choose between earning a good living and spending quality time with their family. Instead of preaching to the feminist choir, the organization works to make these topics accessible to everyone, like through their Make It Work quiz on what television show characters we channel “when work and life get crazy.”
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Martin explains that, despite the way she and her husband have been able to pursue freelance careers that allow them to spend more time with their daughter (who has been on 38 flights and counting), balancing it all can still be a challenge.
“I still have this deep conflict between doing what I love and being with who I love and how do I make it all work?” she says. “It’s ridiculous we’re so far behind on those issues and yet it’s been so difficult over the last decade to make a change.”
Fortunately, the window of opportunity to make major change in areas like maternity leave policy opens wider as elections approach. And with that timing in mind, there are organizations hard at work.
One such group is SPARK (an acronym that stands for sexualization, protest, action, resistance, knowledge), which empowers girls to be their own activists. Breaking the “protect our girls” mold, the organization elevates the voices of young women to discuss their own experiences. Martin, whose first book was Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: How the Quest for Perfection is Harming Young Women, points to SPARK as a solution that inspires her, emphasizing the value of teenage girls expressing how they relate to their own body versus women trying to advocate on their behalf.
Martin, who embodies the rebellion theme printed on stickers and tote bags in the room where she sat, says that she is also thrilled by a cultural shift in what defines a feminist. “For a long time the narrative has been let’s get men involved so they can help women,” she says. “But now we see they have a self interest in the liberation of men and women because were all constricted by these roles.”
Starting with her own husband, Martin points to men who have inspired her by adopting this issue as their own: Jay Smooth, who has put his voice to use not only through his hip hop radio show but also against misogyny; Michael Kimmel, a leader in masculinity studies who is also the founder and spokesperson for the National Organization for Men Against Sexism; and Jimmie Briggs, who started an organization called Man Up, which aims to involve young male advocates to advance gender equality.
Eleven months into motherhood, Martin says her daughter has only made her more passionate — radicalized even — around the issue of work-life balance. “I look at Maya and I just think I want the most equal, fascinating, safe world for her possible and I will do anything to make that happen,” she says.
As she pursues that world, Martin will support the solutions that are out there, while also putting into practice points she made at PopTech that took off in the Twittersphere, including showing up as her whole self and trusting her own outrage.
How Independence Day Clothing Is Reinventing the Way Children With Autism Get Dressed
Michele Iallonardi’s son Jackson, 12, has autism, and while he can physically put on his clothes, he can’t differentiate between right and wrong sides or front and back. “You must actually hand him the clothes the right way and ‘coach’ while he puts them on,” says Iallonardi, of Hauppauge, N.Y., who is also the mother of 10-year-old twins Bennett and Luca. “This should be a skill that he can do independently,” she says, but Jackson can’t because regular clothes have zippers, buttons, seams and tags — often insurmountable obstacles to getting dressed for children with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).
Lauren Thierry, a mother of three boys, is very familiar with these limitations. Her oldest, 16-year-old Liam, has autism, and it was around the time he turned 7 that she envisioned an easier morning routine. “A scratchy shirt tag, a twisted sock seam, an ordinary wristwatch — that stuff can send someone with autism into tantrums, can make them tear off a shirt while on a school bus or kick off a shoe in a shopping mall,” says Thierry, who lives in New York City.
But thanks to the recent launch of Independence Day Wearable Technology, Jackson, Liam and their families are dressing more easily every day.
Thierry — a former journalist who left her job to care for Liam full-time — used her background to research clothing options for young adults with autism. She produced the documentary “Autism Every Day,” and spearheaded Autism Awareness Day at Citi Field, home of the New York Mets. In fact, it was at a Mets game when Liam, then 12 at the time, came out of the bathroom with his pants halfway down that Thierry knew something had to change, because he “still did not have the fine motor skills to zip and button his fly.” Thierry’s advocacy work revealed that many other families with children on the ASD spectrum experience the same issues.
Thierry met with New York City-based designer Dalila Anderson to see if her idea for a line of sensory-sensitive, stylish clothing was feasible. “She wanted to know if we could come up with an idea to make clothing reversible, seamless, etc.,” says Anderson. “I said yes, and just started sketching.”
Anderson, who studied at the Parsons School of Design, serves as Independence Day Clothing’s creative/production director, designer and design consultant, while Thierry is the company’s president. The clothing is made in New York City, using natural fabrics and fibers whenever possible. “That’s a big deal, not only to the autism community, but for me as a designer,” says Anderson.
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The line features rugby shirts, cargo pants, dresses, tunics, leggings and hoodies that are seamless, tagless, buttonless, zipperless and either two- or four-way reversible. Careful craftsmanship and details address the shape and weight challenges facing tweens and teens (the average wearer is 10 to 16 years old) with ASD who are going through puberty. Necklines and waistlines are equally meted so clothing can be turned inside out or backward and forward with ease. “Children want to be able to hang out with friends, and feel like they are just one of the other kids, not have their clothing unzipped, unbuttoned, or backwards, in a way that other people take for granted,” Anderson says.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention currently estimates that about 1 in 68 children in the United States has been diagnosed with ASD, and according to the National Autism Association, roughly half, or 48 percent, of those children will attempt to wander from a safe environment — a rate nearly four times higher than their unaffected siblings. So perhaps ID Clothing’s most compelling innovation is the soft, sensory-sensitive, hidden compartments that house a small GPS device. ID Clothing truly is wearable tech — 11 different devices were beta tested to get the details right. The GPS device “had to be placed in a way where it wouldn’t bother the wearer and it wouldn’t be something someone else could see,” says Anderson. Customers receive a free GPS device with purchase, and through a partnership with Phoenix 5 Global Tracking can set up a plan to utilize the EMPOWER GPS+Hybrid Technology system.
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Though ID Clothing is the first to offer GPS-enabled apparel, they join several other brands making strides in the world of sensory-sensitive goods, including Soft Clothing, SmartKnitKids, Kozie Clothes and No Netz.
However, the wearable technology isn’t without its critics, who are concerned about privacy issues. Appearing before the New York City Council in April 2014, Thierry said, “If you were the parent of a child who bolts, you would not be worrying about big brother. These are the things moms like me go through every single day — keeping predators away, keeping him from wandering — we live with this elevated stress level every day.” The testimony was part of an effort by the council to implement a medical registry and access to GPS technology for people with developmental disorders, in the wake of the tragic loss of 14-year-old Avonte Oquendo, who wandered from his school in Queens in October 2013 and was found dead several months later.
Lisa Keane Herrera, an applied behavior analysis therapist and special education teacher in New York City, has worked with clients, including Thierry’s son, on the ASD spectrum since 2001 and was present at a focus group for ID Clothing. “You could see that the kids [with autism] were happier overall,” she says. “It’s good for their self-confidence. A task that may have taken thirty minutes may now take five. I know parents that spend hours ripping out tags and seams. This is cutting edge for someone who can’t advocate for themselves,” she says.
For Iallonardi, a special education teacher, ID Clothing is a lifesaver. “My son can go in his drawer, take out a shirt, put it on, and it’s right no matter what,” she says. “He spends his whole life with other people trying to figure out what he wants. The more that he can do for himself, the better his quality of life.”
Anderson and Thierry are enthusiastic about the future of ID Clothing. What’s up next? Producing underwear, T-shirts, sweats and socks, while skirts and cargo shorts are also in the works. Sizes will soon expand to include extra-small and extra-large (only small to large are currently available). Thierry’s ultimate goal: to show at New York Fashion Week. “I see high-end supermodels walking hand-in-hand with the real superstars — those living with autism and other special needs, who are true heroes for getting out of bed every morning and getting dressed all by themselves before they leave for school,” says Thierry. “A splashy debut of a clothing line for this population is every bit as noteworthy as a splashy launch of one by some reality show celebrity. [Kids with autism] are the superstars who deserve to be celebrated.”
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Why Is It Important for Parents to Loosen the Reins?
Have you ever sat on a bus and looked out the window only to realize that nothing looks familiar? The bus keeps moving, yet you have no idea where you’re at or where you’re going.
Now imagine this happening to your sixth grader. Would she freak out or calmly ask someone for help?
This scenario is all part of the Free-Range Kids Project, an initiative to help kids gain independence and confidence and just be kids again.
Lenore Skenazy is the mastermind behind the program who started it after noticing how little freedom kids have to explore their surroundings (even their own neighborhood) without parental supervision. After all, only 13 percent of children in the U.S. walk to school while another six percent of nine- to 13-year-olds play outside per week. These numbers are a stark contrast to the previous generation where many children enjoyed more freedom, especially considering that today’s crime rate is the lowest it’s been in 40 years.
So Skenazy wrote a book and blog and started a project called “Free Range Kid” to inspire parents to let their kids do things they wouldn’t normally do — think: walk to school, ride the subway alone or bike to the library.
A New York City public school sixth grade class was the first group to test out the theory with great success. After that, Oak Knoll (a grammar school in Silicon Valley) wanted to give it a try. About a third of the 700 students’ parents agreed to the project. The results? Positive.
Interesting, however, is that it wasn’t just the kids who benefited from the experience. Parents were equally changed and loved what they saw in their kids. One mother named Gina let her son run grocery store errands by himself and was impressed by his expediency, efficiency and responsibility.
“This has really changed our lives!” she writes in her report to the school. “Almost all that we do now is an opportunity to be Free-Range. We did many ‘Projects.’ He baked brownies alone, he comes home now on his bike after school, and he is responsible for his swim bag.”
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Even If You Have a Black Thumb, It’s Possible to Grow Your Own Greens
Hiring a landscaper to design your yard isn’t a rare concept, but how about a farmscaper for your vegetable garden?
While it’s not a mainstream concept right now, through the efforts of Farmscape Gardens, it might soon be a household phenomenon.
Farmscape Gardens is California’s largest urban farming company, bringing edible gardens to 300 clients across the state. Since 2009, the company has been working with residential and commercial customers to develop a plan based on the needs of the client and the logistics of the space. First, Farmscape surveys the property and then will install the garden.
The company continues to work with the client through the growing process as well. Customers can hire weekly farmers to come and maintain their gardens by pulling weeds, controlling pests and harvesting the produce.
All of the gardens utilize a raised bed design, allowing for control of soil quality. Other components include drip irrigation, organic practices and manual weeding.
Right now, Farmscape Gardens has two offices in California – one in Los Angeles with 12 employees and one in Oakland with two employees. Although, the Oakland office just opened this past spring, it has already installed 15 gardens.
The company’s biggest new project was the downtown LA Jonathon Club. Not only is it’s Farmscape’s first rooftop garden, but it allows the social club to sell its customers fresh food straight from above them.
For CEO Dan Allen, this is a step in the right direction for the group as the homegrown produce movement gains momentum. “I would say it has made progress towards being a more mainstream concept and we’ve had a chance for more models to develop and more gain to be collected in each of the models,” he tells Sustainable Cities Collective.
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Children Can’t Learn When There Are Problems At Home. That’s Where Community Schools Come In
Walking down a hallway of Chicago’s South Loop Elementary School, Melissa Mitchell heard a first grader unleash a string of profanities inside a classroom.
“I hear this little voice screaming every curse word I’ve ever heard,” Mitchell says. She looked inside and saw “teeny, teeny” Brianne, standing on top of a desk.
“I’m not going to do this — every word you can think of — spelling test!” the little girl screamed, Mitchell recalls.
At most schools, Brianne would’ve ended up in the principal’s office for discipline. But South Loop is a community school that includes a variety of social services for kids and parents — from medical care and counseling to food pantries and adult GED classes. These facilities, which are gaining in popularity, are based on the idea that no matter how great a teacher is or how many high-tech gadgets a classroom has, kids can’t learn if they’re struggling with challenges at home (think: unemployed parents, a lack of food, the threat of eviction).
Instead of being sent to the principal, Brianne ended up in Mitchell’s office. At the time, Mitchell served as the school’s resource coordinator and was in charge of determining what social supports the South Loop community needs and finding ways to meet them.
Mitchell learned that Brianne wasn’t simply being a brat. The little girl’s parents were going through an acrimonious separation, creating an unstable environment at home. At six years of age, Brianne didn’t understand everything that was happening; nevertheless, it was upsetting her and spilling over into the school day.
After identifying the source of the behavior problem, Mitchell worked with Brianne’s family to address some of the trouble at home. She helped the mother find stable housing and childcare subsidies and connected Brianne and her family to a counselor.
While the community school model that helped Brianne and her family has been around for years — maybe over a century — it’s recently been gathering steam as more and more educators and elected officials see the value of a holistic approach to education reform.
Advocates currently estimate that as many as 5,000 community schools exist in the U.S., with more on the way.
Last year, Michigan’s Republican Gov. Rick Snyder expanded a program placing social workers in schools — a step toward community schools. In June, Democratic Mayor Bill De Blasio announced plans to spend $52 million to open 40 community schools in New York City. And in July, Maryland U.S. Rep. Steny Hoyer and Illinois U.S. Rep. Aaron Schock introduced a bipartisan bill that would establish a grant program to create more community schools nationwide.
A strategy, not a program
Each of the community schools created by these efforts will look different. That’s because their underlying philosophy holds that each one should grow and develop in response to the needs of the community it’s in, not according to some pre-ordained plan.
“It’s a strategy, not a program,” says Jane Quinn, Director of the National Center for Community Schools, part of the Children’s Aid Society.
Community schools each do a comprehensive needs assessment to determine what supports are most needed and often end up with school-based health clinics to address student’s physical, mental and dental health needs, including vision-correction to make sure kids that can see the lessons on the chalkboard.
There’s a lot of evidence that wealthy kids succeed partly because they can take advantage of “out of school enrichment,” Quinn says. Community schools can level the playing field with an extended school day and more academic and extra-curricular offerings outside of the traditional school day.
At Earle STEM Academy in Chicago’s impoverished Englewood neighborhood, program supervisor Quintella Rodgers says that after-school activities include a job club that teaches financial literacy, a power group that focuses on social and emotional health and individual academic help, plus photography, karate, Pilates, volleyball, basketball and DJing classes.
For the whole family
In community schools, “the primary allegiance is to the kids in the schools,” said Sarah Zeller-Berkman, who works for Youth Development Institute, which runs Beacon Community Schools in New York City. “But they still need and want to serve the broader community.” One way they accomplish this is by offering programs for parents and finding ways to integrate them into the school.
Community schools offer extra programming by creating partnerships with existing organizations, like colleges offering classes or not-for-profits running mentoring programs. The social services offered in community schools don’t usually duplicate ongoing efforts, but seek to bring them together under one roof.
At Salomé Ureña de Henríquez, a Children’s Aid Society community school in New York’s Washington Heights neighborhood, for example, the additional services offered include a variety of classes and programs for parents.
On a recent tour of the building, Director Migdalia Cortes-Torres pointed out photographs depicting some recent grads, resplendent in caps and gowns, on a bulletin board outside the school’s health clinic. But they weren’t pictures of students who had finished high school or junior high; they were pictures of students’ parents who had received their GEDs through a program at the school.
In addition to the GED program, Cortes-Torres said the school, which serves a largely Dominican population, offers classes for parents in nutrition and cooking, child development, English language and computer skills. They can learn art history, go on poetry retreats and even travel internationally with other parents.
Lidia Aguasanta, the school’s parent coordinator, says that she’s been helping parents to not only get their high-school diplomas, but to go for college degrees as well. “I do trips with them” to local universities because, she says, “they’re scared to leave the community” and are intimated by the complicated process of enrolling in college since many don’t speak English.
In community schools, support for parents help students achieve success, too. Aguasanta recalls a struggling mom that she convinced to enroll at Boricua College in New York City. The woman is now thriving and the simple fact that she’s now pursuing higher ed makes it more likely that her daughter, a 7th grader at the school, will too, Aguasanta says.
Studies indicate success
Beyond anecdotes like this one, research studies are pointing to hard evidence that community schools can reduce absenteeism and dropout levels and improve grades and test scores.
Not everybody is sold on community schools, however. Jason Bedrick, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom, tells the Wall Street Journal that the model needs more study before people invest in it on a large scale. And the New York Times reported last year that while the creation of community schools in Cincinnati has led to some improvements, many of the schools “are still in dire academic straits.”
Nevertheless, staunch opposition to the model is rare. “Community schools have no natural enemies,” says Quinn, quoting Martin Blank, head of the Coalition for Community Schools. Instructors, including those that belong to the American Federation of Teachers, like community schools because they can focus on teaching, not on whether their students are hungry or in trouble at home.
There are, however, “rival hypotheses” about where school resources should go, Quinn says. Some people believe, for instance, that the key to improving education is high-quality teaching and that anything else is just a distraction.
Wendy Kopp, the founder of Teach For America, has dedicated decades to putting new young teachers in schools, based partly on the idea that better teaching is central to better education. But, she also voices support for the principals of community schools.
“All the successful schools … are taking a community approach,” she said at a recent NationSwell event. It’s important that schools are responsive to people on the ground, not to theorists with big fix-all theories. “You need to empower people at the local level.”
At South Loop Elementary, where locals can address education holistically, Melissa Mitchell’s response to Brianne’s profanity-laced tantrum worked.
“It wasn’t a perfect rainbows and butterflies outcome,” says Mitchell, who’s now the head of Illinois’ Federation For Community Schools. But Brianne did settle down and “the father and mother came to a reasonable custody agreement.”
Leaving Brianne with a little less on her mind and giving her the ability to focus on what she was really in school for: Learning.
The Homework Assignment That’s Saving the Lives of Hungry Kids in New Mexico
Marvin Callahan is no stranger to childhood hunger. As a kid living in a low-income neighborhood in Albuquerque, Callahan watched his parents do everything they could just to get by. For example, Callahan attended Catholic school, and while the tuition charge was $29 per month, his mom sent in whatever she could spare — be it $2, $3 or $4. Despite this, he always had something to eat.
Sadly, food is something that many of his students don’t have. For the past 29 years, Callahan has been working as a first grade teacher in Albuquerque public schools, and every day, he sees his students come into school without having had a meal.
This situation is typical for many children living in New Mexico. For the past two years, New Mexico has ranked number one in the U.S. for childhood hunger. Sixty percent of the students at Comanche Elementary (where Callahan works) are members of the federal free or reduced price lunch program, and 6,000 of the 87,000 students in the district are homeless.
While the federal programs provide lunch to kids from low-income households five days a week, oftentimes, the meal served at school is only one that these children receive. Which is why Callahan took matters into his own hands.
For Callahan’s students, class begins with breakfast. Every morning, he asks his students who has eaten breakfast, and those who haven’t are either sent to the cafeteria or given a snack from the classroom closet. The kicker, though, is that all the money for the food comes out of Callahan’s own pocket.
“I look into my kids’ eyes, and I can see that sadness and apprehension, and the discomfort of not being their powerful, strong, engaging little selves,” he tells the Huffington Post. “Kids are boundless, but the ones who aren’t being taken care of properly with proper nutrition and rest… you can tell.”
Daily breakfast isn’t the only way that Callahan helps out his hungry students. About two years ago, he also started the backpack program with school counselor Karin Medina and other community members. Every Friday, 37 students are sent home with a backpack containing two breakfasts, two lunches and two dinners — enough to feed them for the weekend.
It’s not much, but the breakfast bars, oatmeal, mac & cheese, beefaroni and sliced turkey is more than the kids would probably have otherwise.
“It’s hard for me to go home some weekends when the kids are saying, ‘I don’t want to go home because I don’t have anything at home,’” Callahan says. “I just hope that when I get home and open my refrigerator and there’s food in there, I hope that they have the same thing.”
Thanks to this special teacher, that hope is a reality.
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See the House Built Specifically for Autistic Adults
There’s something new on the horizon for three of acres of prime land in Sonoma, California. And no, it’s not a vineyard or winery, but rather, the first home designed specifically for autistic adults.
With one in 88 kids being diagnosed with autism, the question asked by many families is, what to do when these children reach adulthood?
The solution? Sweetwater Spectrum, which is the culmination of the efforts of families of autistic children, civic leaders and autism professionals. Together, they were able to design and fund the privately-developed $9 million home.
Comprised of four 3,250 square feet houses, the community will be able to house 16 residents over the age of 18. Living facilities aren’t the only accommodation as the Sweetwater Spectrum community also boasts common areas that include a communal kitchen, an exercise studio, a one-acre organic garden, , a swimming pool, hot tubs, art and music rooms and more.
To make it even more unique, the place is designed to reduce unnecessary sensory stimulation (which can be bothersome to those with autism). In addition, it has natural ventilation and solar photovoltaic panels on the roof.
While many homes have strict, rigid schedules, there’s no typical day at Sweetwater Spectrum. Rather, residents can work part-time, attend junior college or participate in one of the house’s day programs. Furthermore, the community offers enrichment activities in the evenings and on weekends.
In order to apply, the person must be on the autism spectrum, want to live there and have a care plan, which is very important according to CEO and executive director Deirdre Sheerin.
“We have an abundant tolerance for a person with autism … but we also need to have a safe environment,” Sheerin explains to Fast Company. “There has to be certain level of acting-out behavior that can be managed through a treatment plan, an individualized plan for care.”
So far, the house has received attention across the country and the globe — even as far away as Saudi Arabia. Although living at Sweetwater Spectrum is costly — $3,200 per month ($650 per month for rent and an extra community fee of $2,600 per month) — many people have already expressed interest. In fact, there are 18 active applications and five people have leases or expressed a desire to lease.
Sounds like a pretty sweet deal, right?
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