The number and intensity of services required to help an autistic child regain a nearly typical future is overwhelming.
The decision to give your child a chance to have an independent future should not be.
It takes funding to recover autistic children.
Just for the Cause, Inc. was formed in 2004, after Liz Parker discovered the critical lack of funding for therapeutic services for autistic children. Liz' own daughter, Kiera, was diagnosed as severely autistic in 2001, and Kiera's successful journey toward recovery has been both challenging and educational.
Recovery requires significant effort from each family member, as well as from a whole host of service providers. Kiera's team consists of dedicated physicians and specialists, a nutritionist, specialists in Applied Behavioral Analysis/Verbal Behavior, Speech, Language, Occupational, and Physical therapies, Therapeutic Horseback Riding, and dedicated teachers and assistants.
By far, the greatest expense is for a critical, time-intensive therapy called Applied Behavioral Analysis/Verbal Behavior. The cost for this critical therapy often exceeds $40,000 a year (little, if any, is paid by insurers). This is a sad state of affairs, because it is this therapy that gives autistic children a voice and an active place in the "mainstream" world; it teaches language and communication skills, socialization, self-care, and so much more. Currently, there is little to no Private, State, or Federal funding to pay the enormous cost of these services.
Just for the Cause, Inc. fundraisers help defray the cost to families for providing critical services to their autistic children.
We are improving quality of life for children with autism and their families. One child at a time, one therapy at a time.
Just for the Cause, Inc. fills the void left by private insurers, public agencies, and established charities, who refuse to fund or under-fund the critical, intensive, and on-going therapeutic services necessary to provide children with autism an opportunity to achieve independent futures.
What, exactly, are we doing?
Performing community outreach activity;
Educating families about therapeutic opportunities, and supporting families with community events, designed to include autistic children.
Fund-raising, to provide grants for therapeutic services including, but not limited to the following therapies:
Applied Behavioral Analysis/Verbal Behavior, Speech, Language, Occupational,Biomedical, Nutritional, Music, Sensory Integration, and Therapeutic Horseback Riding.
Establishing dialogue and improving community collaboration, to improve understanding of autism spectrum disorders and the importance of early intervention to successful outcomes, between:
Families, therapeutic agencies, and educational institutions.
Visit our more detailed web site at:
www.justforthecause.com
Folk Concert for a Cause: Cosy Sheridan & T R Ritchie
in Concert to Benefit Children with Autism
Cosy Sheridan and T R Ritchie are Award-Winning Folk Songwriters.
This concert is produced by Just for the Cause, Inc., Air Mobile Ministries, Bridges BTC, and Trilogy Resources.
All proceeds from this event will benefit CEDAR Academy, a future Charter School in Brevard County. This school will offer unique, individualized educational programs to young children with Autism and related intellectual challenges.
Tickets are $20.00 and tax-deductible! Tickets are required for attendance and seating is limited to 100 people.
Please contact Just for the Cause, Inc. (321-961-1965) to reserve your seat, today!
The doors will open at 7:30 PM, on Friday, January 21, 2011.
Air Mobile Ministries has generously donated their headquarters at 6250 N. Courtenay Parkway, North Merritt Island, FL for this event.
Quantity discounts are available and sponsorships are welcome.
Ticket prices are:
1 - $20.00
2 - $38.00
5 - $90.00
10 - $165.00
About the Artists:
Between them Cosy Sheridan and TR Ritchie have won most of the major songwriting contests in the country, among them the Kerrville Folk Festival, the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, The Sisters Folk Festival, The Napa Valley Folk Festival, The Silverton Folk Festival and the Snowbird Mountain Festival in Utah.
Frequently traveling together but also performing as solo artists they have toured for the past 20 years, singing their songs in coffeehouses and concert halls, at festivals and in living rooms across the country.
Sheridan has been called "one of the era's finest and most thoughtful singer-songwriters." A storyteller as well as a songwriter; she weaves children's fables into metaphors of modern adulthood: The Little Engine That Could talks with Ferdinand The Bull. Her modern renditions of mythology (we meet Hades the biker) have won her fans and praise from the press. The Cornell Folksong Society wrote: "Sheridan is frank, feisty, sublimely and devilishly funny. She fuses myth with modern culture; Persephone with Botox."
In 1994 Sheridan wrote and produced a one-woman-show entitled "The Pomegranate Seed an Exploration of Appetite, Body-Image and Myth" which she performs at colleges around the country.
Ritchie, who learned his musical chops as a street singer in Seattle's Pike Street Market in the early 80's, is a master of understated yet powerful imagery in his songs. Dubbed a "classic folk troubadour" by Performing Songwriter magazine, Ritchie's roots-influenced music has a timeless appeal. This past July he was invited to accompany Alexandra Cousteau and her Blue Legacy crew of photographers and writers on a trip though Cataract Canyon to add a musical perspective to the National-Geographic-sponsored expedition. The crew filmed him singing "Let This Mighty River Roll," his song for Glen Canyon.
Sheridan and Ritchie met at the Kerrville Folk Festival in 1992, and moved to Moab in 1994. In 2008 they co-founded the Moab Folk Camp, a folk and acoustic camp for adults and high school students that takes place each November before the Moab Folk Festival.
For more information about the artists:
http://www.cosysheridan.com
For more information about the concert hosts:
http://www.justforthecause.com
http://www.mybridges.org
http://www.trilogyresourcesinc.com
http://www.airmobile.org
Just for the Cause is improving the quality of life for children with Autism and their families.
