MIAMI (CBSMiami) – A South Florida teenager is making a huge impact on an area non-profit group by volunteering her time to assist differently-abled adults.
Ashley Prats first began volunteering on the WOW Center in Kendall as a 12-year-old. Her aunt is a speech therapist working with adults who’ve developmental disabilities. She enlisted Ashley’s assist for one hour per week.
“I help them conjugate words, I help them with tongue placement, eating food, and swallowing,” Prats mentioned in describing her position.
At The WOW Center, adults from 22 to 80 years of age are offered help, remedy, camaraderie, and compassion. The mission is to assist them turn out to be extra unbiased. Initially, Ashley was hesitant.
“I was at first extremely scared because I never really interacted with anyone with developmental disabilities, so I was nervous to come in and be someone so young teaching someone so much older than myself.”
But her consolation and confidence blossomed with every go to, and 5 years later the junior at St. Brendan High School has made some good mates, like Adriana.
“One of the first things that I connected with Adriana is her love of dancing,” mentioned Ashley. “I just love the energy and the vibe.”
The middle’s govt director, Natalia Wong, cannot say sufficient about Ashley and the mission of volunteers like her who turn out to be ambassadors.
“She’s amazing,” she mentioned, “Volunteers play such an important role helping us make sure we have support for programming and resources but also they take the mission outside the walls.”
But for the final yr, the pandemic prevented all of the volunteers from with the ability to enter the middle or work together in particular person. Ashley missed her visits.
“I wanted to help as much as I could because this place is dear to my heart and taught me so much and made me a better person, so I wanted to share that with others.”
Ashley began an Instagram web page “Be the Wow” to share her WOW expertise and enlisted 15 space faculties for a donation drive to collect arts and crafts and cleansing provides, with an incredible end result.
“On the day of the drive about 400 cars came, and we raised about 25 thousand dollars in supplies for the Wow Center.”
In delivering sources, elevating consciousness, Ashley stored busy till, lastly, that lengthy awaited in particular person go to. There had been a number of hugs on that reunion day.
When requested if she has added up the hours spent right here, Ashley counted over 180. But she can’t measure how a lot the expertise has taught her.
“One of my favorite things is that mentally, everyone is seen as equals, nobody is seen as their disability, they are seen as people. They showed me that I can look beyond someone’s disabilities and see them for who they really are.”