BY JENNI NEWBURY ROSS
PALS Co-Executive Director
The off-season programming at PALS has been part of our work since 2014. Over the past 10 years, we have run Adventures all across the country. Many of you have joined us over the years, testing out the PALS magic in Hershey Park or Monterey Bay, attending a football game at Penn State, or watching the Rockettes in New York City. Our off-season events have always been about gathering members of the PALS community together to share memories, strengthen friendships, and remind us all about the PALS magic and its impact on our lives.
We have had a variety of goals around our off-season programming, but at this time in PALS history, our largest priority is serving as many participants with Down syndrome as possible. While we continue to grow as an organization, our summer programs are still unable to meet the interest we see each year. This means that many individuals (over 30% of all applications) are placed on a waitlist due to space constraints or individuals being older than our target age range (12-30).
With this in mind, we set out to build a series of off-season events that focused on connection and engagement for as many people as possible.
First, our Pop-Up programs will be afternoon events where you can bring the entire family. We hope these events serve as reunions for Participants and Volunteers, as well as an opportunity to bring new friends to test out a PALS experience. There is no age limit or space limit to these events, and we are scheduling four different events across major PALS regions (Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco). Families will have an opportunity to meet each other and connect, while participants will be able to engage in some PALS games and activities. We are finalizing the dates and locations for these events in the next few weeks, but make sure you register as soon as they’re set so we can plan for you!
Second, we are hosting a weekend event (Fri-Sun) at Kalahari Resort in the Pocono Mountains. This event is for individuals ages 18+ who have attended PALS in the past. While everyone over 18 is encouraged to apply, we will prioritize those who are older than our typical PALS age range (30+), and who may be unable to find space or meet the requirements for our modified 21+ programs during the summer. In order to provide as many spaces as possible for our participants with Down syndrome, the Adventure will not follow the typical PALS model of one-to-one pairings but will still have a trained Team Lead supervising a team of participants both with and without Down syndrome. This Adventure will be an epic weekend of waterpark experiences as well as other activities within the resort (mini golf, arcade, etc). Our full group size for the Kalahari Adventure will be about 100 people, and we do expect spaces to fill up fast, so please apply early!
Our hope is that this line-up of activities maximizes our ability to provide PALS programming for as many participants with Down syndrome as possible, and also enables us to focus our efforts on growing our core programming model with the deepest impact - our summer programs.
As always, please feel free to reach out to support@palsprograms.org with any questions!