Special Olympics Broward County

Project UNIFY is a Special Olympics National Project, funded by the U.S. Department of Education. Its goal is to activate young people around the country in an effort to develop school communities where all young people are agents of change — fostering respect, dignity and advocacy for people with intellectual disabilities by utilizing the programs and initiatives of Special Olympics.

Special Olympics Broward County has been awarded one of these sub grants to develop a Project Unify Innovation Zone Model Program.  We are working with the JP Taravella High School Innovation Zone to develop a model which promotes partnership and collaboration within the schools.  We hope to build 3 new unified basketball teams and are recruiting athletes and unified partners from Ramblewood Middle and JP Taravella High.  We hope these “new” athletes and unified partners will ensure the continuation of the Unified Sports program for the future. 

We are also working with JP Taravella High, Ramblewood Middle and the “feeder” elementary schools to implement SO Get Into It Curriculum.  SO Get Into It is a curriculum designed for the mainstream classroom to teach about Special Olympics and people with intellectual disabilities.  We are also going to offer the Young Athletes Program and invite students from the feeder elementary schools.

The third part of the program is focused on Youth Leadership Projects.  We plan to have a Youth Rally at JP Taravella High School.  This project will help strengthen the support for the SO program at Taravella.  We hope to show our youth rally county-wide through the school system and have other high schools involved in the rally.  The other project will be to have JP Taravella High School host a Field Day for the participating Elementary Schools.  This activity will serve to build a relationship between the elementary schools and the high school.

Through Project Unify, Special Olympics plans to EDUCATE, ACTIVATE AND MOTIVATE students to become agents of change in their schools fostering acceptance, inclusion and respect for people with intellectual disabilities.