On Giving Tuesday, Reach Child and Youth Development Society is launching its annual Gift of Speech holiday campaign supporting speech therapy for kids with extra needs in Delta, Surrey and Langley.
The yearly initiative aims to raise awareness and funds initiative to help children with complex needs receive crucial early intervention speech therapy when it will have the greatest impact, as research shows that the majority of speech and language development happens in the first six years of life.
“Every child deserves the opportunity to communicate their thoughts, feelings and dreams. Early intervention in speech therapy provides children with the tools they need to overcome communication challenges, opening doors to connection, learning and confidence,” Reach early intervention therapies manager Anwar Ul Haq said in a press release.
Gift of Speech 2024 shares the progress of four-year-old Arabella Wallace, who has been receiving speech therapy at reach for the past two years.
A video shared by Reach shows Arabella engaging in three different therapy exercises. In the first, a sentence strip is used to help expand sentence length from one or two words to three or four, with pointing to each picture in a story book to help reinforce the connection between words and their meanings.
Then, Arabella uses a Mr. Potato Head toy and accompanying pictures to help her communicate what body part or item she wants, facilitating the spoken word and promoting independence by it allowing her to make choices.
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Finally, the Box Game helps model prepositions, specifically "under" and "on top," while also encouraging Arabella to use a sign or word to say "lift up" when she wants to find the hidden item.
"Arabella wouldn’t be where she is at today with her development if it wasn't through speech therapy with Reach,” her mom, Janelle Wallace, says in the video.
"When we got Arabella's diagnosis, the doctors didn't know if she would ever walk or talk. And with being part of the speech therapy program at Reach, Arabella has really developed her communication skills, verbally and non-verbally, and it just means so much to us that she can communicate in day-to-day life and society with you know her needs and wants, and she can be around her peers and really just interact with them in ways that typical kids can."
Each $75 donated to Reach's Gift of Speech campaign funds one speech language therapy session, and the society has set a goal this year of raising $30,000 — enough to pay for 400 sessions.
And thanks to an anonymous donor, the first $10,000 in donations will be matched, doubling their impact.
Reach Child and Youth Development Society is a non-profit charitable society that has been providing services to children and their families since 1959. Reach currently provides programs and services to over 1,200 children and their families in Delta, Surrey and Langley every year.
To learn more or to donate, visit reachdevelopment.org/giftofspeech.
