Hi friends and family,
I have now finished a 9 week volunteer placement at the Autism Treatment Center of America. Now I must say, this place is one of the most inspiring places I have ever visited in the world.
In the 70's Barry and Samahria Kaufman's son Raun was diagnosed with severe and incurable Autism.
When Barry and Samahria were told to institutionalize their son, they designed a home base program in the effort to reach out to their little boy. Raun went from a withdrawn severely Autistic mute little boy (with an IQ less than 30) to a highly verbal,near genius IQ young man. He graduated from university , and is now in his 30s and shows no signs of Autism. In fact he is now an international speaker.
The programme that the Kauffman's created is called The Son -Rise progmame and has been running for almost 2 decades from the USA. It has touched 66 countries around the world, and their story was made into an award winning NBC TV movie called "Son-Rise A miracle of Love."
The Kauffmans have written 12 books in 22 languages (over 3 million copies sold) and have been read in over 280 Universities around the world.
They run their programmes out of this beautiful 100 acres of sanctuary in Massachusetts which is where their home is. This very sacred haven of learning and contribution .... was certainly a humbling place to work. I was blessed to work in the the marketing section with an inspiring team of people wanting to make an impact in the world.
Here they also run a number of Adult education programmes including Inner Strength, Calm Amid Chaos, Couples Course, Parenting , Extraordinary man and recently I took one called Radical Authenticity. So you can all see why I was drawn to this place.
The volunteer team were great with about 12 of us... including 4 Polish volunteers, who are now taking the programe back to Poland and opening a school there.
In my first week I had the great opportunity of working with twin boys with Autism from Poland. David and Luke were 4 and identical twins...and full of life... I was blessed to have spent the weekend with them...they were so much fun....
here is the web address www.autismtreatmentcenter.org
Well I am now in LA and off to spend a few days with an Australian lady in Phoenix
Until next time.....
Love and hugs
Katrina
ps life is a playground not a battlefield
