Autism Serves Past Project Examples

The first season of the Autism Serves Kids Care Club took place October 2015 through June 2016. To give you examples of what kind of projects and activities your youth and families can expect, here are many of the monthly projects and events that club members participated in. For more recent photos, please visit our Autism Serves Kids Care Club Facebook group.

During this month, the focus was on Peace and Kindness and what then meant to each person. We took our lead from GenerationOn, the Martin Richard Foundation and the Martin Richard Bridge Builder Project. We worked on several projects around the theme of being a peacemaker within our community.

One of the projects was for each of the kids produce a bullying awareness poster to display at their local school.  It was wonderful to see all of the different creative ideas that went into each poster. Each club member had the opportunity to share his/her poster with the club, explaining their thought process and how they supported Peace and Kindness.

We also made Kindness Cards that each member could give out to friends, family, classmates or neighbors to promote kindness.

During this month’s project, we partnered with the Clark County Veteran’s Assistance Center to support local homeless veterans. We had several things that we worked on.

1)  Each person put together a Wellness Kit for homeless veterans in Clark County. These kits included the following items: Pair of warm socks, toothbrush, toothbrush holder, toothpaste, floss picks, washcloth, brush, tissues, razor, deodorant, small and large bar of soap, hand sanitizer, shampoo, conditioner, manicure set, emery board, cotton balls, Q-tips, 2 Kind Bars, Juice, Tic Tacs, Pen and an Autism Empowerment bracelet.

2) We made badges of Honor for each of the wellness kits.

3) We made Thank You cards for all of our Veterans.

Here we are delivering the Wellness Kits to our partner for the month: Clark County Veterans Assistance Center

Here is Ben explaining what is in each bin.

On Saturday, November 21st, a group of Autism Serves Kids Care Club members went to the Clark County Food Bank in support of Walk and Knock on Saturday, December 5th.  Ben and Ryan were lucky enough to meet Vancouver Mayor, Tim Leavitt.  The group completed a total of 41.5 service hours.

On Saturday, December 5th, the Autism Serves Kids Care Club took to the streets of Vancouver to help collect food for those in needs as part of the Walk and Knock food collection.

The Club logged 63.5 hours of service and most important 3 carloads of food that will be used at area food banks around Clark County.

This project was a family favorite and we have done it each year since (2015, 2016, 2017, 2018). In our second year, we had a reporter from The Columbian follow our group and do a story about Autism Serves Kids Care Club. Here is a group picture from that year:

Each December, our monthly meeting is in support of seniors and adults with disabilities. Our group put together Holiday Happiness Gift Bags for low income seniors and disabled citizens.  The bags were distributed through Southwest Washington Area Agency on Aging and Disabilities.  

Caseworkers and visiting nurses deliver these to the seniors and disabled, when they are doing their home visitsand wellness checks.  Many of these elders are homebound and have limited contact with anyone other than the visiting nurses or maybe volunteers delivering home-delivered meals.  Many live on very limited resources, have no families, and otherwise would not have anyone visit or bring them a gift.  The gifts are basic items but bring a little bit of cheer and hope to some of our elder and disabled community members. It lets them know that someone cares.

In addition to the Holiday Happiness Gift Bags, each youth made holiday cards that went into each bag.

The January meeting was held on Sunday, January 10th and this month’s topic was Literacy.  This month’s club meeting was broken into three sections.

During the first section of the meeting, the Kids Care Club members were treated to local author, Brian Tashima who recently published his second young adult sci-fi fantasy book, Mystery of the Moonfire. He talked about what it takes to write a book, his inspiration for the book as well as why reading and literacy is important. He also performed a book reading from his first book, Secret of the Songshell.

In the second part to the meeting, club members were able to make bookmarks and prepare for a visit to the Fort Vancouver Public Library Service Project on Tuesday, January 12th.

During the last part of the monthly meeting, members shared with the group about their favorite book. They shared the name of the book, the author, what the book was about and why the book was a favorite. It was a fun time to learn about the books our children read and for kids to practice presentation and listening skills.
Read Across America Day is March 2nd, 2016, Dr. Seuss’s birthday! What Dr. Seuss book is your favorite?

The February meeting was held on Valentine’s Day and we worked on random acts of kindness. During the meeting we did two projects and afterwards had a Valentine’s Day party that included pizza and cupcakes.

The first project we did was to make “Smile” cards. Each member and family took a sheet of business cards, decorated them and the laminated them. Afterwards, each member was to go out and hand them out to help make each person have a better day. The last project that we did was to make kindness chains that was to show each student how important each act of kindness is and that we can all make a difference.

For our outing, we went to the Clark County Food Bank for a repacking project. When we arrived we found out that the Clark County Food Bank and the Humane Society of Southwest Washington were teaming up to help get pet food out to those with animals who are in need so we were not only able to serve the Clark County Food Bank but the Humane Society of Southwest Washington as well.

All of the people that came out had a great time and they all did wonderfully. Here are some photos of the event.

We love our volunteers and they love volunteering!

One of our monthly partners was the Special Education Parent, Teacher, Student Association (SEPTSA)

We were not able to get photos from this event.

We brought back the kindness cards for this event which was very popular at prior meetings.  Bringing kindness to others is always a good way to take the focus off ourselves and bring joy to others. We also talked about random acts of kindness.

April was a great time to be part the of the Autism Serves Kids Care Club. We didn’t have our normal class meeting but instead took out service and leadership out into the community in two areas of focus, Autism Acceptance and taking part in the Global Youth Service Day.

Autism Acceptance – During the month the Autism Serves Kids Care Club took both the Vancouver and Camas City Halls by storm and both were able to accept both cities Autism Acceptance Proclamations making April Autism Acceptance month for both cities.

During both events, Autism Serves Kids Care Club member Asjia recited a beautiful poem about her oldest brother who is on the autism spectrum and is nonverbal. Asjia wrote a poem that would help people better understand her brother’s life perspective.

Mayor Scott Higgins let everybody know that she did Camas Proud. In fact, Asjia did the whole autism community proud for her understanding and acceptance. We are honored to have such an amazing group of kids who are truly the leaders of tomorrow.
You can watch Asjia reciting it at this link: https://youtu.be/OrRYzA5aJeg (Please feel free to share!)

For Global Youth Service Day, Autism Empowerment partnered with Clark County Parks and Recreation were both youth members of the Autism Serves Kids Care Club, Autism Empowerment Volunteers and Board Members.

We were able to pick up litter, wipe down equipment and signs and rake bark to make the safer for those using the play equipment in the park. Here are some photos of the day.

• Cash gifts
• In-kind donation of supplies
• Volunteering  –  VolunteerApplicationandTalentSurvey
• Donation of a auto, truck, boat or RV (running or not)
• Shopping at Fred Meyer and connecting your loyalty card to Autism Empowerment
• By visiting Autism Empowerment’s Ways you can give page and learning other ways to get involved.