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"Autism Fundraiser"
Anonymous
My brother was diagnosed with autism in 1995, when I was 9 years old. At
the time, I didn’t know what that meant. But I saw my parents crying and
I knew that I had to do something. I began to ask my mom questions about
Kevin and what was happening to him. As I got older, she told me more
about Kevin’s disorder. Autism is a developmental disability that
affects communication and social skills. Autism affects 1 in 130 people
and is more common than Down syndrome and childhood cancer. Many people
with autism do not speak and have trouble making friends. Some autistic
people flap their hands and sway (known in the autistic world as
“self-stimulation”) and some have strange attachments to objects. For
example, I remember a period when my brother wouldn’t go anywhere
without a bag of pennies. There is no known cause or cure for autism and
even the therapies that are available don’t help everybody.
As my brother and I grew up, I became more aware of the way people
treated Kevin. Some people avoided him, some laughed at him, and some
just stared. The more I saw, the more I wanted everything to change. In
eighth grade, I found my chance to make a big difference. That was the
year of my first Autism Fundraiser.
A few of my friends and I organized the fundraiser by ourselves. We
worked with our principal to devise a plan for the fundraiser. I decided
that I didn’t want to just raise money for autism research. I wanted to
help my peers understand what autism is and why we should all help
people with special needs. I wrote a page of information about autism
and had all of the homeroom teachers read it to their class. The
following week, we collected money from students at lunch. As an added
incentive, we had spirit days for every money level we could reach. For
example, $100 was Hat Day. In that one week, the 900 students at my
school raised over $656 for the Autism Research Institute.
Although the fundraiser went over better than I thought, I wasn’t
satisfied. For the following three years, I continued the fundraiser at
the high school. And now, as I am about to begin my senior year of high
school, I am proud to say that my relatively small school of 1,400 has
raised over $5,000 for autism research. The increasing success of the
fundraiser amazes me because it is still a project that my closest
friends and I work on together.
The fundraiser is my favorite part of every school year. It’s a lot of
work, a lot of stress, and a lot of fun. I plan to make my last year at
East Central the best one yet by planning the biggest fundraiser ever.
Even when I am out of high school, I will never stop educating people
about autism. I am proud of the changes I have seen in my school. My
peers have become more accepting and open to those with disabilities. I
can’t ask for more than that.
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