With help from Project Jade and Image360 South in Las Vegas, Nevada, the City of Yelm recently unveiled a communication board at Yelm City Park. The board aims to provide non-verbal, autistic children an opportunity to communicate while enjoying the park.
Project Jade was created by Neily Collick, Jennifer Bleckiner and Sarah Foster. Collick was inspired to create a communication board for her daughter, Jade, who has autism. The nonprofit organization has created several types of communication boards for different organizations in its home state of Michigan and has expanded to schools, parks and libraries across North America.
The board itself has a grid of 54 different words and representations of feelings or other communication needs.
Line Roy, Yelm’s parks and recreation director, said she was introduced to Project Jade by a friend who happened to know one of the founders. She said once she learned about the communication boards and what they offer, she decided that Yelm needed one.
“It was one of the first projects that I suggested and started working on when I got here,” Roy told the Nisqually Valley News on July 10. “I think it’s really important to recognize that all the kids should have the opportunity to play and communicate and build friendships, learn and grow as one within the community. It’s been really lovely to see the families that this communication board will help, and I’ve seen a lot of this already on Facebook.”
Roy added that the city is potentially looking to add a second communication board, this time at Longmire Park. She added the city is looking at the possibility of other inclusive upgrades for the parks in Yelm as well.
“Just having something for everyone in our parks is something that I would love for us to work toward,” Roy said. “This was a step in the right direction.”
Andy Anderson, owner of Image360 South in Las Vegas, partnered with Project Jade to create boards to provide to different schools, parks and areas. He said Image360’s corporate office reached out to him in the spring to see if he was interested in the partnership.
“Of course I looked into it first and I was inspired by their mission,” Anderson said. “I immediately said ‘sign me up,’ even not knowing what it fully entailed.”
Anderson said Project Jade came up with the design for the communication board and sent the graphic to Las Vegas where Image360 prints and ships it. He added that his business’s role is to fabricate, ship and pay for the communication board.
“Even before the partnership with Project Jade, I believed in communication. With everything that’s going on in the world today, especially the toxic environment that’s been created, it has been mostly due to a lack of communication,” Anderson said. “When Project Jade reached out to me, their whole idea resonated to me because we should all be aspiring to communicate better.”
Anderson added that he recognizes autism can create difficulties communicating for some and that there’s a big need in the world for alternative ways of communication.
“I just see it as a step in the right direction. It’s positive. It’s serving an underserved community and it’s easy to do. It just requires people taking interest in these people. It’s a win-win-win situation because this gives non-verbal individuals a great tool to have,” Anderson said. “Our goal is to grow that project in my own community, but support any community that’s on the west.”
According to Autism Speaks, between 25% and 30% of people with autism are non-verbal or minimally verbal.
