>> JUDITH: Oh you're writing down the answer. Yes, please. sometimes those mics are hard to get around. >> AUDIENCE MEMBER: We started a youth program five years ago at our CIL in Dallas, and it was in our strategic plan that we wanted to do that. So that was basically what legitimized the whole concept, but we really did not know where to start. We had core money for staff, and so what I developed was a survey that basically said, if you were to be involved in a youth program, a program for youth with disabilities, what would you want to see it include? And what do you feel like is currently missing? What do you not have access to? and I try to put it in kid friendly language. And then listed 25 options and then a place to add options. And we circulated that survey -- Region X in Texas, there are ten service centers -- maybe there are more than ten -- there are 20. Center service that the Texas education agency has set up that have different expertise. And we're in Region X and we asked them if they would send that survey out to high school students with disabilities and to special ed teachers in high school. And we got 100 returns from each population. >> JUDITH: Wow. >> AUDIENCE MEMBER: and we also sent it to -- in the Dallas area just at that same time it was very fortunate that the VR agency was launching a transition program and they hired 100 transition VR counselors. So about 18 are in the Dallas area. So we sent that survey to those 18 counselors and got 16 returned. We did not sadly get very many returns from parents because that was our other target audience, but we compiled the answers and really they were very similar, which validated what the needs were, and I can just tell you that the top five were, without a doubt, hands down the first one was opportunities for recreation and social activities, social and recreation engagement, they wanted that.
some of the things that create huge barriers and we can do much, much more than that. We can help create a different world and a different life. And it's certainly a responsibility for those of us who are -- who want to call us experienced youth, we can call ourselves that or whatever we want to call ourselves, but all of us can really do a great deal to make things much, much better. So I'm excited for all of you and what you're going to be doing. And those of us at ILRU, at Utah state, I believe I can speak for all of the centers who have been here as presenters, we are all very happy to help in any way that we can and we'll continue to do training like this and continue to provide resources and continue to update the wiki and the web pages and do other things that you let us know are useful to move this initiative forward of creating programs for youth. Finally, I just would like to acknowledge Darrell Jones. Darrell is the one who pulls all of us together and who brought the presenters together time and time again to organize the presentations and Darrell, your handiwork is evident in this training. Thank you for that. [APPLAUSE] >> JUDITH: And I'd like to add another hand both for our presenters and our participants who I think have made this a very memorable training. The real test of whether this training works is how many youth we're going to have involved in our centers and their level of involvement and their movement toward leadership. Have a safe trip home and thank you. [APPLAUSE]