Our mission is to empower children and adults with developmental disabilities to achieve their potential based on personal choices, abilities and interests...
For more information about donations, please contact:
Anne Sweazey
Executive Director
Westchester Arc Foundation
phone: 914.428.8330,
ext. 4625,
fax: 914.997.2985
asweazey@
westchesterarc.org
Westchester Arc
The Gleeson-Israel Gateway Center
265 Saw Mill River Road
Hawthorne, NY 10532
914.949.9300
info@westchesterarc.org
24-hour
Crisis Intervention:
914.949.8200
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His teachers are masters at their tasks; they embraced Ethan and continued to push him to learn and be independent. —Rosa Rodriguez |
Dear Friend:
 |
Ethan joined our family on the cusp of the New Year. We were excited and thrilled to be having this beautiful little boy join our family of three. The birth was smooth and everyone was doing well. Minutes later we were told our son had Down syndrome. First question we asked was “What do we do?” We knew of no one we could go to to ask questions. All we knew was that we wanted our son to live a full and happy life.
Two years later we were introduced to Kathy Higgins, the educational advocate for Westchester Arc and a special education teacher named Maureen through a Mommy and Me class. They introduced us to Westchester Arc’s pre-school. We wanted our son to study alongside his typically developing peers in an integrated class. We wanted him to be involved in a school that would be representative of the world we live in.
The Children’s School for Early Development offered that. Ethan received all of his therapies—physical, occupational and speech—onsite, from therapists who got to know him, his strengths and weaknesses. They worked with our family to help us help him maintain all the skills he was learning at school. His teachers are masters at their tasks; they embraced Ethan and continued to push him to learn and be independent. Ethan even learned how to swim—a sport he dearly loves. He is impressive in the water.
I tell you, dear friend, my Ethan’s story to let you know how much Westchester Arc means to our family. It is a wonderful organization that offers many excellent programs and services. This is a caring organization that has made a difference in our lives and in the lives of many families. We know that government funding will never be enough and perhaps may not even be there in the future. By contributing to this organization, you are investing in the future of an organization that is invested in our children.
Today, Ethan is in kindergarten and thriving. He loves to learn and his spirit soars when he sees the bus pull up because he is going to school. I see the foundation for his life that was built by the team at Westchester Arc’s
Children School for Early Development, the teachers, aides and therapists who form a part of this wonderful
organization, an organization that gave us a lifeline to many wonderful opportunities. We will look to Westchester Arc when he is a teen, when he is employed and when he is on his own and we are gone. This is the organization that our family will look to because the wonderful people on staff there are committed to Ethan’s success.
Whatever you contribute will help this organization to continue to offer the highest quality of services to people with disabilities throughout their lifetime.
Sincerely,
Rosa Rodriguez
Enrich a life
To make gift to the
Family Pledge Appeal,
call Elyse Fowler,
Director of Individual Giving, 914.428.8330, ext. 4515, efowler@westchesterarc.org, or click below to make a secure online donation.
