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Project PLACE (People,
Life skills, Acceptance, Community, Encouragement)
Grant to Help Create Community Room for and Designed By Autistic
Teens
The Daniel Jordan Fiddle Foundation Awards $5000 to Metro West Kids Learning
Center Foundation
Metro West Kids Learning
Center Foundation has been awarded a $5,000 grant to support the development
of Project Teen PLACE (People, Life skills, Acceptance, Community,
Encouragement) from The Daniel Jordan Fiddle Foundation, a 501 (c)(3)
national autism organization with the mission to develop and award grants to
programs that benefit adolescents and adults with Autism Spectrum Disorders
(ASD).
“We are thrilled to help create the opportunity for adolescents with ASD to
socialize, develop friendships and have fun which is necessary for the
well-being of all people and particularly difficult for individuals with ASD,”
said Linda Walder Fiddle, Founding Director.
The project involves the development of a community room that will be housed
within Metro West Kids Learning Center (MWKLC) in Clive. It will be
designed for, and perhaps more importantly designed by,
high-functioning adolescents on the autistic spectrum.
Project PLACE will provide a teen-centered environment for existing
adolescent programming (180 programming slots per year for youth ages 13-18)
including social language groups, educational support, community groups,
social gatherings and transition planning. It will also result in the
development of new programming focused on teaching adolescents the crucial
skills needed to complete the PLACE and helping them generalize those skills
to life outside the project.
“We are excited to give our kids an appealing place of their own to work on
the skills they so desperately need to become independent adults,” said Toni
Merfeld, Metro West Kids Foundation President. “This kind of project
wouldn’t happen without the dedicated support of organizations like The
Daniel Jordan Fiddle Foundation.”
For more information on The Daniel Jordan Fiddle Foundation visit
www.djfiddlefoundation.org
.
To learn more about Linda
Walder Fiddle, founder of the Daniel Jordan Fiddle Foundation, and her
mission, read
Redbook's December 2009 issue.
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Our daughter has benefited so much from attending Club CLUE.
It has been helpful to have friends that are "safe" and
understand the nature of her disability. She has come out
of her shell at school, too. We're thrilled that she is
branching out and going to school dances and other social
functions, and we know that
Club CLUE has played a large part in giving her the confidence
and skills to take this major step.
-LeAnn W.
MWLC Parent
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