Out & About: Engaging Adults with Developmental Disabilities

Out & About: Engaging Adults with Developmental Disabilities

Ken Anderson Alliance creates Live, Work, and Engage opportunities for adults with developmental disabilities. The Engage program is all about enabling these individuals, age 22 to 50, to go out into the community. Therefore, between six and eight of the 208 adults in the program go on one to two outings each month with Ken Anderson Alliance staff and volunteers.

“We don’t dictate what we’re going to offer each month,” says Kevin Potts, executive director at Ken Anderson Alliance. “We ask the participants what they want to do.”

Sometimes that means attending Cyclones, Reds and Bengals games. Other times it involves going to trivia night at a local bar or heading to the movies, concerts, museums, putt-putt golf, arcades, zoos and plays. The two most popular outings the participants choose is to volunteer at Matthew 25: Ministries produce distribution/food box program for seniors, and the Freestore Foodbank, the largest emergency food and services provider to families in Greater Cincinnati.

“It says a lot about the people with disabilities who we support that they choose to give back and love doing it,” says Potts.

In 2019, Ken Anderson Alliance received the Volunteer Spirit Award from the Freestore Foodbank because the Alliance participants are so beloved.

“There are college students who volunteer [at the Freestore Foodbank] who call to ask when Ken Anderson Alliance will be there because they want to overlap,” says Potts.

The Engage program offers a solution to the isolation that individuals who live in residential program housing may feel because so often they go to a day program, come home, and sit in front of the television for the rest of the night.

“They want to get out into the community, but activities that are open to other individuals may be prohibitive for adults with disabilities,” explains Potts. “We want to offer that access for them to live and enjoy the experiences and engagement that we do every day.” Ken Anderson Alliance has plans to build a $40 million dollar community that will provide housing and access to support services for 175 adults with disabilities.

“Most of the people in our Engage program want to be residents in this new community,” says Potts. “They want to be around their friends with similar disabilities.”

Because the Engage program has grown so significantly, Ken Anderson Alliance is actively seeking additional volunteers and paid positions. To learn more, contact Gio Boeing at gio.boeing@kenandersonalliance.org.

Ken Anderson Alliance is located at 11260 Chester Road, Suite 280, Cincinnati, OH 45246. For more information, call 513.813.8321, email info@kenandersonalliance.org or visit www.kenandersonalliance.org

Related Stories

No stories found.
Venue Cincinnati
www.venuecincinnati.com