Guest: This year it’s crazy we’ve had a pandemic, COVID19, and Hurricane Sally we have to keep the safety of our families a priority everyone has to social distance so for virtual buddy walk every family signs up their team on our website and what they’re doing is their own walk, we’re not going to be in Bienville square, we love it but it’s a mess and I don’t think it’s ready anyway, so every family will have their walk at their own location, they can do it in their neighborhood a church parking lot anywhere there’s a good walking surface people can walk push a stroller
Chad: What does this event raise money to do?
Guest: This is our only fundraiser to this event raises money for the whole year when we have a normal year including events, play dates, that’s for the babies up to 5-6, when the kids all get together they play while the moms and dads socialize and get together on different needs and things they may have and bounce back ideas off each other and for our older kids we have just social events, Throughout the year we have meetings and professionals that come to our meetings parents support group, we may have occupational therapists, speech therapists, feeding therapists we may have someone from social security come by to talk to us, someone from the school system to come talk to us all the different things our parents need to help with their family, sometimes the money is used to go to state and national conventions that we have a lot of information on a national level we help fund some of the transportation and fees for things like that.
Chad: What do you think you’ll miss most about not having that in person event?
Guest: The crowd and all the love that everybody shares and seeing all the families, sometimes we don’t get to see all the families except at this one event, and we may have 50 families show up with all their friends and family, we’ll miss all that but we want to make it as happy as it can be.
For more information on how you can support this year’s Buddy Walk or the CADSS click here.
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Source: https://www.wkrg.com/mobile-county/annual-down-syndrome-buddy-walk-goes-virtual-in-2020/
