(Spencer)– A local organization has put together some videos to increase awareness about disabilities. Tom Rutt of the city of Spencer’s ADA Council says prior to COVID, they would physically go out to the schools. Now, he says they’re getting the message out through some videos they’ve produced with the help of Spencer Municipal Utilities. Rutt says they’re geared toward fourth grade students…
“That’s generally the time of years we see the kids are kind of starting to get more, actually engaged in their community, is that fourth grade year. So we’ve shared these videos with the public school teachers here in Spencer, with the fourth grade teachers at Sacred Heart Catholic and also with Iowa Great Lakes Lutheran. And so now it will be up to the teachers here these next few weeks to show the videos. And they have little introductions explaining what they’re doing to those kids. And then at the end of the videos we have a little thing saying if they’d like to engage more with persons with disabilities we have a poster contest. They can put together kind of their feelings of what it’s like to be a person with disabilities. We always use every year as a theme persons with disabilities are just like me. And the kids just come up with such great ideas and really get it figured out that, hey, persons with disabilities do, you know, play basketball or golf or swim. They have active lives just like everybody does.”
The videos can also be viewed by the public through the council’s Facebook page and SMU’s YouTube channel. They will also air on SMU Channel 3 at 9:00 pm Thursday, April 1st; 1:00 pm Friday, April 2nd and at 5:30 pm Sunday, April 4th.
Rutt says the posters will then be judged…
“The Spencer Rotary Club generously denotes the cash prizes for 1st, 2nd, 3rd and honorable mention, and then we will display them at the Spencer Public Library, and I’m thinking we’re going to try to work out a deal possibly with Arts on Grand and possibly have them there later in April or possibly in early May, so you can look for those there. But like we say we’ll also take pictures of them, have them on our Facebook page where you can view them there. We do have the past winners from past years on our Facebook page if you want to check those out, too.”
The posters will be judged at the Spencer ADA Council meeting April 13th.
