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Calais Foundation Donors have profoundly impacted the lives of our students and their families this past year. We’d like to share a few highlights that showcase donor dollars at work.
On a broader scale, The Calais Foundation held two major fundraising events during the 2023 to 2024 school year – The Calais 5K Charity Run and our 12th Annual Foundation Gala. Together, these events raised close to $80,000- crucial funding that has helped to bridge the gap between the covered cost of tuition and the true cost of a Calais education.
Let’s take a closer look at the impact donors have made on the lives of individual students through The Calais School Work Based Learning (WBL) Program. Through internships in real life businesses, WBL helps students acquire transferable work skills, industry specific knowledge and resume building experience.
Foundation donations funded Learn N’ Earn Stipends, which played a pivotal role in incentivizing Calais student interns and validating their efforts in the workplace. To date, students have gained experience in a variety of industries, including hospitality, coding, graphic design, floral design, information sciences, retail, food retail, health & fitness, child care and more. This year, we proudly welcomed Two Fields Bakeshop and Best Buy to the robust list of Calais community business partners.
In May 2024, The Morris County Chamber of Commerce honored our school with an “Innovative Program of a Nonprofit Organization” award for its trailblazing therapy dog program. Donor support has allowed us to hone a proprietary technique for integrating therapy dogs in special education. Now trademarked as The Calais Method™, this program has helped countless students achieve academic, behavioral, and therapeutic success. Our therapy dogs give students the support and confidence to overcome school phobia, manage feelings of anxiety, improve self awareness, work on social skills, and work on self-regulation. Many students have enrolled at The Calais School specifically for access to The Calais Method™. Generous support from The Calais Foundation has made this program available to more students than ever before!
Donor dollars also helped to subsidize lunches for students in need and has offered a boon to families by sponsoring The Calais School Parent Support Group. This monthly after hours initiative, led by school counselors, provides our Calais families with the opportunity to come together in a safe space to share concerns, offer insights and support each other.
It’s been quite an eventful year, and we are grateful to The Calais Foundation. The Calais Foundation has helped our school stay on track with our mission to empower children with serious learning disabilities and socialization challenges to reach their fullest potential in life. Thank you for helping us make a difference!
Learn more about The Calais Foundation and all it does to support the special needs community here.
