Around Town

‘It’s Very Special’: New Canaan Y Co-Hosts Autism Awareness Family Fun Day

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Town resident Maura Delany held back tears Saturday afternoon watching her 14-year-old daughter Lila step across a trampoline in the Kid Zone at the New Canaan YMCA. A Saxe Middle School student who has autism, Lila Delany had missed last year’s inaugural Autism Awareness Family Fun Day—co-hosted by a local organization, Inclusive Together, in partnership with the Y—because she was scared, according to her mom. “I’ve never actually really seen her play as much as she is right now, so it’s amazing for her,” Delany said as her daughter moved freely among the kid-friendly equipment with other children and teens. Delany added: “I’m trying to hold back tears right now because she went on the trampoline for the first time today. It’s very special.”

The free 90-minute event, part of the Y’s celebration of Autism Awareness Month, saw 12 families with 23 kids play in the Kid Zone and do activities in another room at the Y where a Sherman-based company, Sensory on Wheels, set up a “slime bar” and stations with dyed salt, beans and lentils, balls, scarves and other items designed to empower the kids by helping fulfill their sensory needs in a natural, child-led environment.

Around Town

Doing Good Abroad: New Canaan YMCA Reps Leave Friday for Africa’s Largest Slum

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[Editor’s Note: Starting Monday through next week, the New Canaan YMCA’s Julia Douglas will publish daily updates and photos of her observations and experiences from Kibera, the world’s second-largest slum, located outside Nairobi, Kenya. Sign up here for our daily newsletter to receive her posts first thing each morning, along with New Canaanite’s always-local news feed.]

Mary Coleman, membership director at the New Canaan YMCA, said she’s always wanted to participate in Peace Corps-type work. An especially well-traveled person already, having visited places such as India, Japan, China and Korea, in addition to Europe, Coleman believes that volunteering to provide manpower abroad would be “very fulfilling.”

“To participate and give back and learn and understand, and to better relate to the community again what it is we are doing here at the Y,” Coleman said Thursday afternoon from a meeting room at the South Avenue facility, with four other women who on Friday will leave together for a 10-day excursion to the largest slum in Africa. “I’m hoping it will be very sobering, life-altering, and that I will bring back some important messages to my family and the community.”

Coleman—along with 10 other people including the YMCA’s Nicki Jezairian, Carolynn Kaufman and Julia Douglas, as well as Anne Goebel, a Stamford Hospital nurse who serves as the Y’s wellness nurse coordinator—on Saturday night will arrive in Nairobi, Kenya, and travel the following day to Kibera, a slum of one million people living in an area about the size of Central Park. Under a partnership that dates back to 2007, the New Canaan YMCA has worked with a child development center in Kibera that provides food, clothing, classroom materials, medical attention and other essentials for hundreds of kids who live there.