Young Athletes, the southern hemisphere’s only Special Olympics program for intellectually and physically disabled children, is under threat as it struggles to survive without qualified volunteers and government funding.
Young Athletes, a motor-skills plan for children between the ages of two and eight was created to run alongside this year’s London games, teaching disadvantaged children to aspire towards Olympic scale dreams and move beyond their diagnosis.
David Graham, director and founder, is running the program despite a severe lack of government funding and disability-trained staff.
“There’s no government funding for the Young Athletes program,” he said
“I came into it very green, as all the volunteers here- I believe none of them actually have experience with kids with intellectual disabilities but we’re open with that with the parents from the start.”
Despite limited resources Mr Graham said the results have been overwhelming.
“It’s been worlds beyond what I thought and I only see what I see once a week,” he said.
Megan Sweeney, a parent involved in the Port Melbourne class, said the program has forever changed the behaviour of her handicapped seven-year-old son, Jack.
“We’ve noticed such a huge change in his attention span, and how he is interacting with the other kids… it’s just been fabulous,” she said.
Mr Graham hopes to expand the program, but cannot continue to run the developmental activities without the help of young, Melbourne-based, disability savvy volunteers.
“We’ve definitely got plans to expand. We’ve got this session at Port Melbourne here, and another at Vermont South. We’ve got the other one in Ascot Vale that we’re looking at to start at very soon, we just need to find the volunteers,” he said.
If you would like to volunteer visit the Young Athletes website.
Get involved with Young Athletes at these locations:
View Young Athletes Melbourne in a larger map
Listen to why Young Athletes needs a hand.
