Today we’d like to introduce you to Wonderfully Made.
Hello Wonderfully Made, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
One of our founders was deeply impacted by watching her son with high functioning Autism go through severe struggles as a child, adolescent, and college student. Her son’s biggest questions in life were: “Do I matter in this world? Will friends want to be with me? How do I make friends? Will I make the basketball team?” She was very motivated to use her skills as an Occupational Therapist (OT), and the valuable lessons that her son taught her, to help develop an organization to support our beautiful children with unique needs and she felt God asking her to come up with a program to assist children with various special needs to know that they are valuable, precious, and important.
The idea continued to grow as she heard input from the parents of children she worked with as an OT. Many parents expressed frustration with the lack of local opportunities for their kids with special needs to participate in fun social activities the way that their other kids did. Several parents also told her that there were almost no recreation activities that all of the children in their family (neurotypical and Autistic) could do together.
So was born the idea of having therapists and other trained volunteers support a local day camp so that kids of all abilities could attend together. In the first few years, with the support of NFAR grants and community donors, we were able to purchase sensory equipment and to develop camp-themed social lessons, visual supports, and modified activities and equipment to support the kids’ social and physical engagement in the camps.
After several summers of successful camps, some community members told us they would like to support our vision and asked if we could provide receipts for a tax deduction. At the time we couldn’t because we were just a group of co-workers, but through that conversation the idea of forming a non-profit was born. As a board, we are passionate about integrating typical children with children who have special needs so that they can all see how we are all uniquely and wonderfully made, and that God uses each of us to be instruments of His Love and His Light. As we were thinking of a name, our founder brought up a verse from the biblical book of Psalms in which the author says they praise God because they are “wonderfully made”; One version says “Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous” (NLT) and another translates it “remarkably and wondrously made” (CSB) and another “fearfully” (as in reverently or “awesomely”) and wonderfully made. We love the idea that people, and especially kids come into this world with their own beauty, skill set, viewpoint, and ways of engaging and we want to be a part of helping them know that they are valued, capable, and wonderfully made.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
We are now in our 4th year as a non-profit organization. Our vision has expanded a bit and in the last year, we have been able to partner with several other organizations to provide therapist support and training for programs such as parents’ night outs, and schools that are exploring how to support students with special needs. We are currently looking forward to supporting a VBS (June 13-17) and a sports camp (July 25-29) this summer.
Some of the things we do well are:
– Individualizing supports – Each child is unique and we want to make sure that they are presented with challenges that are obtainable and also given all the individualized support they need to meet the next challenge.
– Partnering with families – Inclusive activities run best when we listen to the kids and their parents to hear what is important to them and what works well for them.
– Providing a high level of professional support – Our events are all staffed with licensed Occupational Therapists, Speech and Language Pathologists, and/or Physical Therapists who have been trained and take annual continuing education courses to keep learning how to best support the kids we work with.
Some of the moments we are most proud of are:
– A mom of 4 kids (2 typically developing, one Autistic, and one who uses a wheelchair) telling us that it was a fantastic week for her family because it was the first time all 4 of her children could participate in a sports camp together
– Watching a group of about twenty 6th graders play a modified soccer game on their hands and knees and hearing them exclaim that they couldn’t believe how strong and fast the boy who usually uses a wheelchair was after he made multiple goals.
– An autistic child telling a neurotypical child, “You look mad. When I get mad, I take deep breaths”. He then watched the peer take deep breaths and rejoin the group.
– A mom telling us that she’d never left her child with anyone outside of the family because he tends to run away or get upset, and telling us it was her first night out that she felt confident that he’d be ok, and then watching her son laugh and smile with a therapist as they raced up and down a hallway for more than an hour, using his communication device to tell her “run” each time they reached the end.
– Having a 3rd grader tell us he was proud of himself because the week of sports camp was “the first thing (he’d) been able to actually finish since being diagnosed with brain cancer” because a volunteer and a PT helped him play soccer despite balance issues caused by the removal of a brain tumor.
In terms of your work and the industry, what are some of the changes you are expecting to see over the next five to ten years?
We are passionate about helping children and adolescents with unique and challenging needs grow more aware of how beautiful they are, and recognize that “God has plans to prosper them and not to harm them, plans to give them a hope and a future” (Jeremiah 10:29). We see the role of Wonderfully Made as being an instrument of God’s Love to come alongside the special needs community with our professional skills to assist them with maximizing their functional skills, self-esteem, and recognize how beautiful they are in Christ. We sincerely hope to listen to feedback from families on how we can continue to expand our programs to assist our special needs community with developing functional skills in multiple areas of their lives to assist them with developing or enhancing social relationships, leisure skills, vocational skills, and other life skills. We also hope to expand and begin addressing the needs of older adolescents as they transition into adulthood. We would love to consider adding counseling/psychological support to adolescent camps, where developing young adults with special needs and emotional challenges will feel the love of Christ embracing them as they step out into the adult world.
Contact Info:
- Email: info@fwmus.com
- Website: fwmus.org
- Instagram: @WonderfullyMadeUS
- Facebook: @WonderfullyMadeUS
Image Credits
Mark Dalby
