Ep.119 A Mom’s Commitment to Giving a Voice to the Voiceless w/ Marianne Georgiou

Show Notes:

Marianne Georgiou, founder of A Voice for All Foundation, discusses her journey from optometry to advocating for neurodivergent, non-speaking individuals. Her son Nicholas, who uses an AAC device, inspired her to create communication boards for playgrounds and community parks, leading to the foundation’s inception. The boards, tailored for specific locations, include picture symbols and words in English and Spanish. Marianne highlights the importance of presuming competence and educating first responders and the community. The foundation has installed boards in various locations and partners with local businesses and schools. Marianne emphasizes the need for empathy and communication tools to support non-verbal children.

• Marianne Georgiou’s Background and Introduction
• Marianne’s Career Shift and Personal Life
• The Birth of A Voice for All Foundation
• Community and School Reactions
• Details of Communication Boards and Slap Bracelets
• Challenges and Success Stories
• Long-Term Goals and Future Plans
• Volunteer Opportunities and Community Support

Episode Notes and Resources:

HER Circle: https://www.herhealthcollective.com/membership

A Voice For All: https://avoice4all.org/

Support Mama Needs a Moment! Become a patron through our Mama Needs a Moment Patreon.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

A Voice For All, communication boards, non-speaking individuals, inclusive community, career shift, special needs, AAC device, playground settings, community parks, first responders, empathy teaching, presuming competence, fundraising, volunteer opportunities, educational programs

SPEAKERS

Marianne Georgiou, Crissy, Cindi

Cindi  

We’re so excited and thrilled to be speaking with Marianne Giorgiou, founder and president at A Voice for All Foundation. A Voice For All Foundation is a 501, c3, nonprofit organization with the mission to provide a voice to non speaking individuals, non English speaking and or individuals with speech disorders or limitations in playground settings. They do this by implementing communication boards as well as advocating and encouraging an inclusive community. Marianne is also a doctor of optometry and a mom to three boys, that’s a busy life, right there.

Marianne Georgiou  

It’s very adventurous. 

Cindi  

We’re going to ask you a lot about your life as a mom, your life in the organization, getting it started. But also you’re a doctor of optometry?

Marianne Georgiou  

It seems like a lifetime ago,

Cindi  

 So, you’ve had a career shift, obviously, yes, excited to talk to you about that, too. Thanks for being here.

Marianne Georgiou  

Thank you for having me and the opportunity to share. I am super excited to chat more with you about all that you’re doing in the community and for the community, but first we have a fun get to know you question. So I want you to choose a number between one and 10 for us.  Oh, boy, seven. Well, I have three boys. Let me go with three.  Oh, okay, that’s always my number.

Crissy  

Ah, what do you have a love hate relationship with? 

Cindi  

love/hate relationship? I think about this question all the time.

Crissy  

Cindi, do you really?

Cindi

I do! I have a love hate relationship with fitted sheets. I have a love hate relationship with onions, but it’s not my question. So Marianne, take it away.

Marianne Georgiou  

Gosh, that’s a hard one. Love/ hate relationship with? This is gonna sound like extremely shallow, but my hair

Cindi  

That isn’t that shallow. 

Marianne Georgiou  

Actually, this is the thing. So I’m originally from Puerto Rico, and my Hispanic roots, my hair is curly. So while I was going through optometry school, you know how like your eye chart is? A lot of the times is behind the practitioner, right? So I found myself doing this number so that the person could read the chart, because shifting to the side they Yeah, because the humidity is so big, and I could have been another girl by like, so, yeah, I have a love because, you know, like, we all want to have hair, but then it’s like, Oh, I’ll have to deal with it. Well, that and health insurance, like, you can’t without it, but you can’t deal with it. So it’s one of those things. 

Cindi  

Crissy, do you have one?

Marianne Georgiou  

yeah, my thing is, like, I need people to see the chart, and my hair is so big that they can’t, so I have to kind of shift to this side so they could see. So at that point, I opted to straighten my hair, so that it would not be a block. So when I I mean, I’m sure I do. I just don’t know. Marianne, you did a beautiful job. Because if I was put on the spot, I don’t know, I would answer that. I do agree. I think hair is a great answer. Like, I love my hair. I love having my hair. I’m grateful for it, but also I wish it was thicker, and sometimes I wish it was more straight. And then we get into all that stuff about how we want to change our body and our image, and, you know, wanting to also just appreciate who we are and how we appear in the world, and the messages we give to our daughters, and blah, blah, blah, I go down a whole rabbit hole with that, but, you know, I think that’s a solid answer. I’ll go with Marianne’s answer. You’re not obstructing the vision chart.  That’s right. So that first came to mind. I think, for me, when I put it in a ponytail, and I wear my hair up a lot, because I hate stuff in my face, I get really annoyed. But like, when I look at the back of my head, my hair, I have a lot of hair, but it’s so fine, and it just looks to me like a little rat’s tail, like hanging off the back of my head. I’m like, how do people have this full beautiful hair?  I’m willing to donate. So if you want take some

Crissyi  

I’ll take hair from both you and Cindi Well, Marianne, it’s always important to understand what events brought an individual to where they are today. Will you please share your story from beginning as a doctor of optometry to becoming an influential voice within the advocacy space for special education and special needs populations? 

Marianne Georgiou  

Well, when I was an optometrist, interestingly enough, going through school, the population that I concentrated on the most was special needs or secondary Optometry. As I moved to the States, got married and had children, optometry became that we left that in the back burner so that I could be a stay home mom and raise my kids and. Was always the plan for us. However, having a special needs child change those plans, because there’s really no nine to five job that you could have that would meet the schedule that I need to have for my child. So there’s always speech therapy, there’s always occupational therapy, feeding doctor appointments. So my optometry career became a back burner situation, and I was a full time mother, which I love, although I kind of miss those conversations like doctor patient interactions, because at one point, if Elmo didn’t say it, I did not know it.

Cindi  

Darn Elmo!

Marianne Georgiou

If “Super Why” didn’t sing about it and Elmo didn’t say it.. I was unplugged from the world. But I do have three boys. My middle son, Nicholas, is my special needs sweetness, and he uses an AAC device to be able to communicate. So it is a computerized device, and he presses the buttons, or he pushes the buttons, and it speaks for him. However, when we went into the school system and he went into in person school after that year, we don’t speak of a virtual learning Oh, right, yeah, we were told that he could not take his device out into the playground. And I’m like, well, the playground is where all these interactions happen. You make friends, you practice social skills, you become community within your school. And if my child was not going to have a voice in his school playground. None of that was going to happen for him. So at that point, I went back into the principal’s office and I said, Look, how do you feel about communication boards in your playgrounds? Before you say, No, I’m not asking for money. I’m not asking the PTA for funds, simply asking for permission to run with this project. Because I really, I mean, for me, it was a need rather than a want. So I said, just give me permission, a role with it, and that’ll be that after that project was done, and every playground in that school had communication boards like, what about all the children that don’t have a voice in their playground and don’t go to my son’s school. So this is essentially how this nonprofit was born. Out of that project for my child and his peers. It just kind of took off from there. We not only place communication boards in school playgrounds, we do so in community parks as well. So we teach our children when they’re in school, and when we say our children, as a mother of a special needs little guy, you can adopt all of them, and you fight as fiercely for them as you would fight for your own child. So they are taught what to do, what not to do, how to engage with the general population. But we don’t teach the general population how to engage with our children. So there’s this big disconnect when it comes to general population and special needs community or community that needs a little more support. So that’s where we come in. We teach the community how to best support and engage with those that have those speaking limitations or speech or language differences.

Cindi  

It’s so beautiful. It’s such a blessing to have people like you out there that are the voice for the voiceless. Your son, you said, uses an AAC device, which stands for an augmentative and alternative communication device. And then when you were telling your story, you’d said that you had gone into the principal and that you said, okay, you don’t have to do anything. Let me run with this. What was the reaction of the school, and how did the community react when you first introduced the idea of the communication board, were they immediately supportive? Were they more supportive because you didn’t ask them for anything that you were going to do at all?

Marianne Georgiou  

I mean, it’s kind of like a no brainer, right? It’s like, Wait, we have to do essentially nothing, and we would get this that would help the community. Sure roll with it. Within two weeks, I had $3,000 from the community to make this project happen. So I did not get a no from anyone. And it’s one of those things that you don’t think about if you’re not living in that bubble, or if it doesn’t like, serve or support your immediate family, but when you hear about it or see it, you’re like, oh, yeah, that’s a great idea. Why don’t we have that everywhere? So it was well received by the community. It was well received by the school. My list of needs and wants is bigger than what I have the budget for. So we have schools are. Brownway County, calling and emailing and saying, we need this for our children. We want this in our playgrounds. So is been more than well received because it doesn’t meet a need that is there.

Cindi  

Okay, and then, how did you go about the fundraising for it? Were you just reaching out to, first the school, the parents in the schools, how did you that first $3,000 and then going forward, how do you raise that money?

Marianne Georgiou  

Well, it was kind of interesting, because it was not pushy. I was not going out seeking money. It just kind of happened in conversation, and people would literally just say, hey, here is X amount for your project. I had to turn down money because at the time, we were not thinking nonprofit. We were thinking we just need this much to make this project happen, and we had more than enough to make that happen. One of our biggest supporters at that time was Phillips farms over in Cary, and I just happened to be taking my children on their farm, just a fun day with the kids out of the farm. And I remembered, I’m like, Oh, they have a special needs day every year. I’m just going to shoot my shot and see what happens out of that conversation. They donated $1,000 to my project. So it was just very natural, just not pushy or this or asking. It was just a natural conversation. And again, most people see the need and they want to help the community. Most businesses want to support the community, because they know that families and the community will support them, because they are supporting our children, because they’re supporting community. So it was extremely natural, not like your typical, fundraise, hey, buy this, Hey, donate that. And we had to turn down money at the time because we had enough. We had more than enough. That’s so exciting.

Cindi  

I’m curious if you could give our listeners just a quick visual of what the communication boards look like, because you also have the slap bracelets. Those are pretty understandable. I mean, I think people understand what a slap bracelet is. It’s your typical bracelet that you hit on your wrist and it wraps around, but it’s got words on there. But if you could explain that, that’d be great.

Marianne Georgiou  

Sure. So our communication boards have picture communication symbols, and they have words at the bottom. We tailor these communication boards to the location and the population that is going to serve. So if this is going in a community playground is going to have core words that people would typically use in a playground setting, run, jump, stop, wait, slide. So, you know, words like that. We’re very intentional when it comes to choosing vocabulary. We do have a speech pathologist on our board, so we’re particular when we’re choosing language, we also put pictures of the actual playground equipment, so that if a child wants to play on a particular slide, they can go and point to that particular slide on the board. So he has Core Words. He has pictures of the actual equipment on the playground. It has the alphabet and numbers, so that our spellers, if a buddy comes and asks, Hey, what’s your name, they can spell by touching the board, they can touch the alphabet and spell their name. For the most part is English on one side and Spanish on the other. So it’s a two sided board, and most of the time they are color coded, just like AAC devices are color coded. Pronouns are one color, nouns are another color. Action words are another color. This picture communication symbols is their language. I’m not reinventing the wheel. We’re just taking what is used in their playgrounds and even in their bathrooms out into the community, so that they can use that to communicate and engage with others. So it is low tech, but it serves the masses. So if everyone is on the same plane, communication wise, I can use that to talk to my buddy, and my buddy can use it to talk to me. It not only serves non speakers or non verbal individuals, but also we’re a very diverse community. So if grandparents come from China and child lives here and only speaks English, they can communicate using these communication boards, because those pictures are universal. If somebody’s hearing impaired and feels like they’re not being understood, you can use those communication boards as well so it serves broad population, not only those that are non speaking.

Crissy

 I was at Shelley Lake recently at their playground, and I saw a communication board there. I’m not sure if that was one of yours or another one, but I. Remember being really excited, because I knew this conversation with you was coming up, and I happened to be with a friend and her daughter, who is not special needs, she’s verbal and but she’s young, just learning how to read. And she found her way over to the board, and her mom went over there with her, and they were actually just using it as an opportunity to look at the pictures and the letters and sound out words and so, I mean, I think there’s a lot of really neat benefits to it. I also managed to bring up to that mom, you and what we were getting ready to do, and what the, you know, the purpose behind these communication boards were, and for older children, or even for her daughter, that’s an excellent opportunity to dive into a conversation about special needs individuals, and you know, people that are non verbal, and what that might look like, and how we can interact with them. And I think having those conversations with all of our kids is really important, and having something so visible in so many different locations is a really great conversation starter for all of us out in the community. So I think there’s a lot of hidden benefits kind of in there that probably are just now coming to light, or that we’ll start to see over time. So I think that that’s really, really beneficial. I go into a totally different direction here, but I remember being in college, and I get emotional here at my apartment complex, there was a young boy, he was non verbal, and he had climbed to the top of the apartment complex and was threatening to jump and the Police had been called, and I remember we were all standing there, and he couldn’t communicate, and the cops didn’t know how to communicate with him. So I will also say everything ended in as good of a way as it could have. He was brought down and he was saved, but I remember just he’s making these guttural noises, and nobody was able to communicate with him. The cops weren’t able to they had to call someone special in and just even thinking about your slap bracelet, I’m assuming that it is for scenarios like that where at least there could have been some form of communication in that one moment. That moment will forever stay with me. But I think things like this, like what you are creating, have such long reaching effect for people like first responders and, you know, being able to communicate with with certain individuals. So thank you for what you’re doing with this.

Marianne Georgiou

Our slab bracelets are actually made for to meet basic communication needs. Okay? So it has seven words on them. It has Yes, help go, no bathroom, all done and want so you can meet somebody’s basic needs with those words. You can start by asking yes or no questions, and they just point at the answer on your bracelet. My child uses that device to speak, but if it runs out of juice, I can just take off my bracelet, show it to him, ask that question, and I can meet his need right then and there, slap it back on and keep on moving. So it’s a great, neat tool for on the go. Another program that we do have is just that first responders, health care providers, police force. We team up with them so that we can make a tailored handheld tool with picture communication symbols and all of that, so that they can best communicate and engage with those that have those speech and language needs. The tool is great. However, we do give them training on how to use that appropriately, the do’s and don’ts. How do I best engage? How do I use this so that I can best serve and support? A lot of the times, what happens currently is I don’t know how to best engage or communicate with someone that is not speaking. So I shut down communication. I go about my routine of doing certain things. Meanwhile, that child is more scared, more anxious, so that, in turn, can turn into aggression, not necessarily because they’re aggressive in nature, but because I’m scared, there’s no expectation, I don’t know what’s going on. So in my mind, I’m going down a rabbit hole. So more often than not, that’s what ends up happening, and that’s why you hear about non verbal children being handcuffed and back of police officers cars. That also happens when we are going to get a checkup for healthcare. Doctors are not trained on how to best support and speak to those that have special needs, so they know their trade extremely well. However, when it comes to something unknown. And it happened to me. I took my child over to urgent care, and as soon as everything was fine, as soon as I said, non speaking, everyone took a step back, and I just kind of looked at them, like, what’s happening? And no one wanted to assess my child. They were like, Oh, we’re just going to observe. I’m like, why don’t you need to take data? Don’t you need to look at my child and run some tests to be able to determine whether he’s okay or not? I ended up doing the tests and collecting the data. And after the visit, I talked to the doctor, and I said, you know, my child’s superpower is that he’s extremely chill, so he’s not a behavioral child. He is extremely calm, which is his superpower, but he uses it wrong, because in that same token, it’s hard to get him motivated to learn new things that he doesn’t want to, because he’s just like, I’ll just play over here and do my own thing. Thanks. But I was thinking, how do you serve this population, if my child is not, you know, throwing tantrums or having big feelings and big moments, and yet everyone takes a step back, how do you support them? And how do you do your routine tests? And he looked at me and he said, Well, to be quite frank, I do a very poor job. I said, Well, that’s not acceptable. Like my child is the same as anybody else. He can’t produce words. Those are hard for him, but if you ask him questions, he can answer you. Ask him if he’s in pain, he’ll tell you. You ask him if he needs to go to the bathroom, he’ll tell you. But they’re afraid of what they don’t know. So more often than not, they don’t get the same care that everybody else does, because of that enigma that they are, or that label that they put on them, like, well, he’s nonverbal. They don’t presume competence. And that’s scary. That’s scary as a mother, because when I’m no longer here, I want my child to grow, thrive and learn to the best of his ability. So my job right now is to prepare the community for my child and those like him, because I need to set all those things in place for him, because the community is not ready. Now, my child’s not going anywhere. So it’s about awareness and education and how you can best support, how you can best serve. Because they’re not second class citizens. They’re citizens just like anybody else, and they are extremely deserving. But again, you don’t know what you don’t know, so I take those as educational moments. I’m a firm believer that when you speak to someone, you either learn something new or teach something so they’re more likely to receive it out of love and concern than anger. It’s different seeing you working on the layouts on your computer, and as you see, the actual thing is always a magical moment. I took my child with me as they were being installed. I asked him, I said, Nico, how do you feel now that you have words in the playground? He touched the word happy, and that was everything like that moment made everything worth it that he now knew that he had a voice in the playground. And that, to me, I mean, our children spend most of their time in their schools. If you don’t feel like you have a voice or belong in your school community, what can you expect from the community at large? So to me, that was huge other students in the general ed, or general population in the in the school, were extremely excited, and they were learning vocabulary. And if you’re already a speaker and you speak English, they were learning Spanish because they were looking the back of the board. And like you mentioned earlier, because that structure is there, you will have more conversations. About certain things, because our playgrounds are open to the public when school is out, sometimes you go and play soccer, or sometime, I know certain facilities are used for church services on Sundays, so families are exposed to something new, and you will have those conversations with your children that you may necessarily not have had if you didn’t see something like that in a playground. We are not born having empathy. That is something that needs to be taught. You don’t just wake up one day and say, think I’m going to be empathetic from now on, like it just doesn’t happen. But if we are taught that our differences make us beautiful from early on, from pre K, kindergarten, bullying decreases because this is now normal. This is now a different way to communicate, and it’s okay that you don’t have a voice. So if we have those teachable moments early on, I feel like the world will be a better place.

Crissy

Absolutely! So powerful what you’re doing and your passion for your child and this project and serving the community is so palpable. I commend you on what you’ve done and the ways that you’ve turned this into something that can serve the community. You have been quoted saying, It’s no secret that I’m the mom of a special needs sweetness. I love my son something fierce. He’s my heart and I am his voice. I would not change him for the world, but I will change the world for him. I literally have goosebumps. That is such a beautiful quote, and I know so many moms will have a visceral reaction. They’ll identify with that it’s a powerful statement. It’s full of love and support. Will you please share what it felt like when you saw those communication boards installed for the first time?

Marianne Georgiou

It’s different seeing you working on the layouts on your computer, and as you see, the actual thing is always a magical moment. I took my child with me as they were being installed. I asked him, I said, Nico, how do you feel now that you have words in the playground? He touched the word happy, and that was everything like that moment made everything worth it that he now knew that he had a voice in the playground. And that, to me, I mean, our children spend most of their time in their schools. If you don’t feel like you have a voice or belong in your school community, what can you expect from the community at large? So to me, that was huge other students in the general ed, or general population in the in the school, were extremely excited, and they were learning vocabulary. And if you’re already a speaker and you speak English, they were learning Spanish because they were looking the back of the board. And like you mentioned earlier, because that structure is there, you will have more conversations. About certain things, because our playgrounds are open to the public when school is out, sometimes you go and play soccer, or sometime, I know certain facilities are used for church services on Sundays, so families are exposed to something new, and you will have those conversations with your children that you may necessarily not have had if you didn’t see something like that in a playground. We are not born having empathy. That is something that needs to be taught. You don’t just wake up one day and say, think I’m going to be empathetic from now on, like it just it doesn’t happen. But if we are taught that Brent and our differences make us beautiful from early on, from pre K, kindergarten, bullying decreases because this is now normal. This is now a different way to communicate, and it’s okay that you don’t have a voice. So if we have those teachable moments early on, I feel like the world will be a better place.

Crissy

 I’m assuming A Voice For All Foundation is just local at this point. Is that true?

Marianne Georgiou

No, okay, so we have, I mean, we are local to Apex, North Carolina. However, our mission does not stop in our borders. We have communication boards as far west as Illinois. We have some in Alabama. We have some in New Jersey. So yeah, we’re home based, but if it’s something that you need elsewhere, we are happy to work with you. That’s amazing. So if a parent or educator school is interested in one of these communication boards, how would they go about getting this initiative going in their community? So on our website, there’s my email and my phone number is literally my number. So you’re not going to get a random person, you’re not going to get a robot talking to you. You will talk to me. The goal of this is, if we have the funds available, your school will get this at no cost. However, like I said, we have more inquiries than we have the budget for right now, so at that point, we will help you fundraise to get this project going. So we will not leave you alone with it. We are applying for certain community grants so that we can fulfill all the needs that we have within our community. If you just shoot me an email or text call, I’ll be happy to work with you.

Cindi  

I’m excited to talk a little bit more about A Voice For All Foundation. We’ve already talked about, how you get the communication boards up there, the slack bracelets. I’d like to direct us a little bit more towards the education and awareness programs that you offer through your organization. What are some common misconceptions about non speaking children and AAC devices that you’d like to address through your advocacy programs?

Marianne Georgiou  

I feel like the biggest thing is pursuing competence. Most people, when they see somebody that has X or Y need they don’t presume competence. My child is not able to formulate words however. He can hear you, and he’s understanding everything that is being said around him. So a lot of people assume that because you can’t speak, you must not be smart or you can’t comprehend, and this is why the first thing that I say when we’re giving these chats or this educational sessions with our healthcare providers or police officers is like, Please presume competence. Talk to them just like you would anyone else, because more often than not, they know exactly what you’re saying to them. And a lot of the times, if we set the expectation so low, why would we rise up to meet that expectation? It’s like, they don’t think I can do it. It’s okay. I won’t like, I don’t have to put any effort, because there’s no expectation. So the first thing would be pursued competence as you’re addressing and directing that conversation go down to their eye level, because that one makes it more comfortable. It makes it seem that you’re talking to them instead of talking at them, so they’re more likely to cooperate with you. If you’re down to their level, if you are asking, if you’re talking directly to them, then rather talking at them, it builds trust. It makes them feel more comfortable. So you’re more than likely to get a response or cooperation.

Cindi  

I know that you’ve said that you go to the first responders and educate them. Could you tell us about any other programs that you do through your work?

Marianne Georgiou  

So right now, we are partnering with Wake CIT. So we trained all of first responders, police officers that come through CIT training, which is crisis intervention training. We’re also partnering with Wake EMS so that all of our paramedics and ambulances will have tools tailored to them, so that when and if they need them, they’re equipped to have a communication tool and bracelets as well. The school system is a little different. It takes a lot of hoops to jump through to be able to serve them. However, is something that we’re working with currently. We are putting boards at Lacey Elementary School in Raleigh, and also Salem Elementary in apex. So it takes a little longer to be able to serve the schools just because of the hoops that we have to jump through, but that’s my primary concern, is to our schools.

Cindi  

 And when you say the hoops are you talking that you have to work through the Board of Education, you have to get approval, and that’s one of the barriers that you come up against in the schools, or are there other barriers?

Marianne Georgiou  

So for the most part, is approval, and also, we’re not changing the structure of the playground, however certain depending on where you live and where you are, if you are cementing something in ground, or the type of board that we’re providing, we may need a permit to be able to install. So those things is not just talking to a business and writing up a contract and oh, you give us the board, we install and we’re done. So is getting approval for the language, getting approval for where it’s going to be installed, talking to the principal to see if there’s a permit needed because of the location and area that the school is located in, also checking for gas lines underground. If we are installing a board that is in ground, if we’re installing a board that is going on a wall or on a fence, it’s a little different. But if we’re installing in ground, then we need to check all those things, make sure that we are checking all our boxes and that we’re doing everything properly.

Cindi  

That’s so interesting, because there’s hoops that people would never even think about there that you just mentioned things that would hinder the progression of being able to install these rather than just saying, kids need these on the playgrounds. They need them in the parks. Let’s just put them up. There’s all these different approvals that you have to go through. Yes, well, thank you for taking on that battle that it’s so meaningful and important to hear you talk about this. What are your long term goals for A Voice For All Foundation

Marianne Georgiou  

Long term goals. So we started with just wanting to serve Wake County. However, we even have 25 boards in all the head starts of Durham and Orange County, not necessarily because there are special needs children there, but because in your head starts you see pre verbal children, so children that are learning language that you don’t know if they’re going to have a delay just yet, they’re just learning how to speak. So my goal is to have our boards in every school that serves the special needs community, they need to be in their playgrounds. They need to be in our community parks. We need to have every first responder, whether is police officer, firefighter, every community helper should have the knowledge and a tool to best engage and communicate with those that have speech or language limitations. I do not expect them to be speech pathologists by any means, but I do expect them to keep our children safe just like they would anybody else, and communication should not be the thing to hinder that just the awareness and education part alone on how to best support that family, how to best support that child when lost. We actually worked with the Chinese lantern festival in Cary for their special needs day. We created a communication tool tailored to that particular event. One of the volunteers that had our slab bracelet was able to bring back a nonverbal child that was lost because they were able to take off the slab bracelet and use it to speak to them once they see that you speak their language and that they feel more comfortable in knowing that I can talk to them, I can trust them. They speak my language. They’re more than likely to cooperate with you, because you’re starting to build that trust. So that volunteer came up to us and they were extremely excited and said, I was able to bring that little boy back to their parents because I was able to communicate. With them, so that was meaningful to them, and I’m sure it was meaningful to their parents. That’s so amazing. So it’s like little things that, I mean, we celebrate all the wins and we have grace on the setbacks, but a lot of things that to somebody that only has neurotypical children to them, it might be insignificant to me is huge. I remember one night at this point, I think my oldest child had a fish Nicholas walked up to the fish tank, and he was looking at it for a little while, and all of a sudden he said, Bubbles clear as day. He was 830 at night, we had a party because my child said the word bubbles, we we have cake and everything like we are celebrating. I haven’t heard bubbles since then, but it was special. He was able to formulate a word, and is a huge win. So something as quote, unquote is significant as hearing a word is is huge. So we do celebrate all the wins. 

Cindi  

Oh, for sure. Thank you so much for all that you’ve shared. We will link to your website as well as your social channels in our show notes, but I’m sure that there’s going to be some listeners that are curious about getting involved with you, and I’m sure that you graciously welcome volunteers. And what are some other ways that you would welcome some involvement? Can you tell us how some people can get involved with you?

Marianne Georgiou  

Absolutely, so you can go through our website and go through our volunteer link. A lot of the times, is supporting our families, is helping us go through vendor events and talking to families or raising funds for a particular school. I have a local realtor who is amazing. Her name is Heather Taylor, and she called us and said, Hey, I’m a local realtor. I love what you’re doing. How can I support who’s your next school on your list? So her Realty Group raised funds to support that particular school, and this fall, we’re putting communication boards in that school because because of them. So as you talk to people in the community, they want to support, they want help. And obviously we’re putting her logo on on those boards as well. Oh, wow,

Cindi  

I love it. Thank you so much. Mary Ann, this is a great way to end my week, speaking to you and just hearing the amazing things that you’re doing for people out there, the kids out there. So thank you so much for your time.

Marianne Georgiou  

Thank you so much.