Progress Report...fun and games!

 In March and April a group of men decided to make some Yardzee games.  It consists of 5 dice just like the well known Yahtzee game, but this is made to play outside.  Great activity for at a camp, playgroups, and parties!  Perfect for all ages!  Here is George, Marlena and Nathan, part of the group who sanded and stained the dice, as well as attached all the vinyl dots.

In April we have continued our education in Personal Outcomes, and this discussion was about "People Choose Where They Live".
We talked about what HOME means to us individually and these are a few of the meanings we came up with.  Home means different things to different people.
In the past we may not have had the ability to choose where we live or who we live with but at least now we know there are options available out there and we have the right to choose!
We also realize that sometimes there are barriers to us having choices.  Here is an example of a barrier:  Joey wants to move from a group home to an AFLA (Alternative Family Living Arrangement).  All of the AFLA's in his town are full so what choice does he really have?  Now we have to start finding ways to remove the barrier.  Joey can speak to his caregivers to let them know he desires a more family oriented living arrangement.  Joey can ask them to work with him and his social worker to find an AFLA that suits him and his personality.  Joey knows he should have a say in which AFLA he gets to live in, not just the first one that comes available. Joey could also choose to move outside of his town to realize this goal.
This is just a start to how we move forward with choices and they should never be made in haste...with the exception of abuse or neglect.

On April 19th we had surprise visitors from Sydney, Nova Scotia drop into our center.  They were from the Haley Street Adult Service Centre Society and their claim to fame is that they started the Chase The Ace game that cashed out at over 1 MILLION Dollars!!!!  Wow...can you imagine winning that for your community project?  That got us excited about our plans to go to our own town's Chase the Ace game tonight!!!  If you would like to contact Haleystreet Center go to www.haleystreet.org .