Join us and advocate Gary Shulman for one or all of our 2024 two hour sessions where you can share issues and challenges you’re facing as a parent or caregiver to someone with a developmental disability. Gary and our team will provide resource ideas, stories, empathy, and connection with the other families present. It is a resource discussion with heart.
The substance of each session will come from the participants and will therefore have different content for each session. We will adddress questions and concerns from registrants, then facilitate interactive discussions so both host and group participants can explore strategies, options and possible solutions to the concerns raised. The goal is to give participants the tools needed to conquer current and future barriers confronting their family member with a developmental disability and their whole family.
These will be open-ended sessions with support, compassion and concrete information shared. The overriding motivation is the quote by Plato, “Be kinder than necessary for everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle.” We all need ammunition to fight these personal battles in life and the mere act of sharing and caring can be a life-saver.
These sessions are about hope. Nobody has a crystal ball foretelling the future so all we can do is empower ourselves with information and share inspiration for the best possible futures for our families. Hopefully these sessions will do that.
Gary Shulman, MS. Ed. has spent a lifetime supporting vulnerable families and children. He began his career working with children with and without disabilities in an inclusive Head Start program in Brooklyn NY. He then transitioned to become the Special Needs and Early Childhood Coordinator for the Brooklyn Children’s Museum for 10 years. His passion for advocacy grew as he worked more and more with parents of children with disabilities. For over 24 years he passionately advocated for the needs of these parents as the Social Services and Training Director for Resources for Children with Special Needs, Inc. in NYC.
The last years of his working life, Mr. Shulman served as a private Special Needs Consultant conducting hundreds of training sessions throughout NYC and beyond to help parents and professionals find and access the services and systems required to facilitate maximizing the potential of their children with disabilities. Now retired in Arlington VA, Gary continues his workshop presentations virtually and now also enjoys sharing his poetry that he passionately writes with the goal of leaving this world a better place one word at a time.
Remember, all of our workshop and webinar events are FREE to attend, but pre-registration is required.
As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, The Arc of Northern Virginia relies on private support from individuals, corporations, organizations, and foundations to fund our efforts. Your generous donations help make it possible for us to provide programs, services, and advocacy so that people with IDD can live “A Life Like Yours.”
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