This Week

FRIENDSHIP CIRCLE from page 12

SPECIAL AIVIEZEINTTEMS

Following are some proposed features of the new facility:
• Homework Time Supervision will be available each evening free of charge.
• Community Gym and Playground: Open daily, they will allow children with special needs to play together with family members or Friendship
Circle volunteers on full-access, indoor-out:door playground equipment.
• Gatherings: The facility will be a place for holiday and birthday parties, family lectures and Sunday afternoon get-togethers.
• Volunteer Training: It will be offered to volunteers working at the new building and also those who visit children and families at home.
• Family Lectures: Seminars and courses on pertinent subjects will be held for families of children with special needs.

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Alison Gilligan, 7,
of Livonia enjoys
outside play time at
Bingham Farms
Elementary School
last August, with
camp assistant Lisa
Cambell, 19, of
West Bloomfield

Garrett Rasdott, 8,
of Novi works on a
project with camp
assistant Sue Gunn
of Livonia during
the Camp Therapy
pilot program held
last August in
Bingham Farms.

confidence that we will raise the rest."

Life At Life Town

When Shari Kaufman suggested a
social-skills and therapy component to
the new facility, she called it "Life
Town." Designed by Habitat Inc., an
Arizona company specializing in realistic
movie-set environments, it will be built
as a scale-model city street within the
Life Town Center.
"Life Town is a prominent feature of
the building and is as realistic as you can
get," Rabbi Shemtov says.
The "street" will have parked cars,
lampposts, a private home and store-
fronts of a food store, a general store,
movie theater and a restaurant, each
containing a functional, completely dec-
orated interior.
"It will be used to teach the children
social skills and how to behave in real-
life situations, with volunteers acting as
shopkeepers and shoppers, citizens and

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2000

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pedestrians," Rabbi Shemtov says.
Creating the therapy component of
Life Town was Rebecca Lepak, hired as
therapy director at the new facility.
She is a speech and language patholo-
gist and owner of Lepak and Associates
in Walled Lake.
Other programs at the center will
include physical and occupational thera-
pies, speech and language pathology,
coupled with emotional support and
encouragement and social-skills training.
Children will learn how to apply thera-
py-acquired skills in real-life situations.
"This will teach the children how to
exist in the real world," Lepak says.
Under the direction of a therapist and
an aide, Camp Therapy will be used to
teach social and behavioral skills in
camp-like groups, integrated with
enabled children as well. Last summer,
Lepak ran a Camp Therapy pilot pro-
gram for 10 weeks at Bingham Farms
Elementary School with 16 children,

and plans to do so again next summer in
a rented facility.
Camp Therapy is one of the few
Friendship Circle programs to have a
cost to parents, although it will be on
a sliding scale. Most other program-
ming will be run by volunteers and
have minimal or no charge. The
Friendship Circle is open to all chil-
dren with special needs, regardless of
religion or race, says Rabbi Shemtov.

Dream For The Future

Rabbi Shemtov sees the new facility,
with its many components, as a dream
about-to-become-true.
Kaufman describes support of the
new building as the true definition of
derech eretz (civility or respect).
"If I learned one thing from the
Torah, it is that we should treat our fel-
low man with kindness and take care of
the people around us," she says.

"Children are our future and Friendship
Circle believes in believing in children
— no matter what their capacity
"They take a child by the hand and
look him in the eye and promise so
many things the world doesn't promise.
They promise a friend," she says.
Friendship Circle gives children with
special needs "the chance to be who
they are and to act in any manner their
character allows them to act," she adds.
"Every single person has the capacity
to fulfill somebody else's dream. They
just don't realize how little it really
takes for these children."

For information on the Friendship
Circle, becoming a donor or join-
ing the Friendship Circle Volunteer
Club, call Rabbi Levi or Bassie
Shemtov at (248) 855-1212.

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