SOS Walk to Albany
Donation protected
SOS Walk To Albany
We are a parent volunteer group called Save Our Services (Facebook) . We are concerned about the movement across New York State and the country to close sheltered workshops. We will be walking across New York to inform New Yorkers on the importance of sheltered workshops. Sheltered workshops are a safe, supervised environment that allows those with special needs to work with supports not typically found in the competitive workplace. They were started around 60 years ago, mostly by parents who were looking for a solution to the problem of what would their kids do when they left school, usually around age of 21. Workers in sheltered workshops earn wages on a sliding scale, based on their level of productivity. The goal of a sheltered workshop is to give the workers a sense of pride that comes from working, a safe opportunity for socialization, and reason to get up in the morning.
We will start our walk on Sunday, September 20, 2015 and take 12 days to walk a 250 mile route across the state. Our walk starts at Production Unlimited, a sheltered workshop in Watertown, New York, and will end at the Capital. This is a mission to inform New Yorkers of the great good that is done by sheltered workshops. There will be a group of core walkers who will travel the whole distance as well as walkers who will join us for legs of the walk in their community. We will have a little red wagon with us that we will use to gather samples from the different sheltered workshops along our path. We will be posting to social media and You Tube throughout the walk to inform the public of our message and create a record of the trip.
We are asking for $10,000 to help cover the expenses involved in such a grand undertaking.
We are planning on traveling back home the first part of the walk. We will need to reimburse friends who help us with that. After the distance required to go home becomes too great (about 100 miles into the trip), we will need to cover lodging expenses. Other costs include food, proper footwear and gear, and childcare expenses for volunteers with small children. If we have money left over, it will be used to promote and support sheltered workshops so that children with special needs can have a future.
We are a parent volunteer group called Save Our Services (Facebook) . We are concerned about the movement across New York State and the country to close sheltered workshops. We will be walking across New York to inform New Yorkers on the importance of sheltered workshops. Sheltered workshops are a safe, supervised environment that allows those with special needs to work with supports not typically found in the competitive workplace. They were started around 60 years ago, mostly by parents who were looking for a solution to the problem of what would their kids do when they left school, usually around age of 21. Workers in sheltered workshops earn wages on a sliding scale, based on their level of productivity. The goal of a sheltered workshop is to give the workers a sense of pride that comes from working, a safe opportunity for socialization, and reason to get up in the morning.
We will start our walk on Sunday, September 20, 2015 and take 12 days to walk a 250 mile route across the state. Our walk starts at Production Unlimited, a sheltered workshop in Watertown, New York, and will end at the Capital. This is a mission to inform New Yorkers of the great good that is done by sheltered workshops. There will be a group of core walkers who will travel the whole distance as well as walkers who will join us for legs of the walk in their community. We will have a little red wagon with us that we will use to gather samples from the different sheltered workshops along our path. We will be posting to social media and You Tube throughout the walk to inform the public of our message and create a record of the trip.
We are asking for $10,000 to help cover the expenses involved in such a grand undertaking.
We are planning on traveling back home the first part of the walk. We will need to reimburse friends who help us with that. After the distance required to go home becomes too great (about 100 miles into the trip), we will need to cover lodging expenses. Other costs include food, proper footwear and gear, and childcare expenses for volunteers with small children. If we have money left over, it will be used to promote and support sheltered workshops so that children with special needs can have a future.
Organizer
Jamie Todhunter
Organizer
Watertown, NY
