When a Former Client Gives Back

The ARC Marion Early Intervention Program is truly an amazing place.  Through play-based curriculum children from roughly birth to age three have the opportunity to learn skills to help them grow and develop.  Some children come to EIP who can’t roll over or sit up much less run, jump and play like most little children.  They come in with very limited vocabulary and have multiple feeding and interactive issues.  Yet, miraculously, when they come into a program with like-minded children doing like-minded things, they seem to catch on to the program.  By the time they leave the program at age three, they are so far advanced from where they started.  Families and children’s lives are changed forever.  In fact, 10-12 children “graduate” out of that program each year in the mainstream classroom with no need of special education classes at all.

New EIP swings

One such individual is a freshman at a local high school who is working on his Boy Scouts Eagle Scout designation.  Over the summer, he decided that his Eagle Scout project would be a new swing set for the EIP program at ARC.  Why? Because 12 years ago, he too, was one of those little miracle children who came through the EIP  with flying colors.  He was one of the children back then who was mainstreamed into the public school classrooms following his time at EIP.  He has been in “regular” classrooms his entire life and decided he’d like to give back to the organization that helped to make him who he is today. 

Not only is the finished project beautiful and resourceful for the children in EIP now, but the story has served as an inspiration to many.  It sort of makes me want to give back to people and organizations that have blessed me over the years, too.