By: Kelly Rouba
According to the US Centers for Disease Control, approximately 13 percent of children have a developmental disability, which can range from cerebral palsy to autism.*
Moreover, “when you look at our whole society and the number of people that have some form of disability, we’re talking about 20 percent of our population,” notes Cheryl Kilmer, CEO and founder of the Training, Education, and Research Institute (TERI) in California.
Established in 1980, TERI is a non-profit organization that strives to improve the quality of life for children and adults with developmental and learning disabilities and has even been recognized as a model program by the State.
“The people that we work with have been pretty classically underserved throughout time,” said Kilmer. “We developed (programs) to serve as models because our mission was to model high quality standards for services for people with developmental disabilities because the standards were so poor across our country and needed so much work.”
When Kilmer founded TERI, staff evaluated the pre-existing standards of services. “(We said) ‘we want to make a difference in quality standards. What would be the best way to do that? Should we just go out and try to serve as many people as we can with quality services? Or better yet, should we develop our programs as models, hoping those models will be replicated and dramatically expand our reach.’ We decided to do that, and we are in our 31st year and the mission has never changed.”
However, “our programs have evolved and the way that we reach people has evolved. The other significant difference is probably the scope of our services; we have a very wide continuum of services that we have put in place for our clientele and their families, including our most recent and another unique feature—our life planning services. We call it our Center for Life Planning,” Kilmer said.
Other services TERI offers include:
- 10 Residential Homes
- Two K-12 Schools (The Learning Academy & The Country School)
- An adult education & vocational center (Center for the Arts & Adult Education)
- A fitness & recreational center
- A therapeutic equestrian program
- Music & movement therapy
- Life Quality Planning
- Research
- Family Support Services
- CAL (Choices for Adult Learning)
- Transportation
- The International Association for Life Quality
In an effort to help create awareness of TERI’s mission and services, Michelle Williams, formerly of Destiny’s Child, recently agreed to serve as a spokesperson for the organization.
“I got involved with TERI last year,” Williams said, adding that her godson was also diagnosed with autism last year. “When this opportunity came to me, I said, ‘Wow, what a way to bring awareness to autism’ and TERI was the right fit.”
Williams first learned about TERI when she was invited to perform at their Summer Soiree. At the fundraiser, Williams sang Amazing Grace while 10-year-old Jaegar Heathman played the piano. “He is a young man who is autistic, but he plays the piano very, very, very well. He could put Justin Bieber out of business,” she remarked.
Funds raised at the event went to help fund the building of TERI’s new Center for Research & Life Planning, the first state-of-the-art center to study life quality for individuals with autism and their families. The new 20-acre campus in San Marcus, CA will feature a Life Planning Center for families, as well as a therapeutic equestrian center, a fitness and wellness center, a culinary school, and the Center for the Arts and Adult Education for children and adults with autism and other developmental disabilities.
In terms of lending her support behind TERI, Williams knew she wanted to do more than just perform at the Summer Soiree. “You know how you get programs who want to get that celebrity push (and have) that celebrity come and be part of the auction and to raise awareness (and) then you see nothing more of that celebrity at that program, although it might be mutually agreed upon?” Williams said, adding, “I said I don’t want to just be on the program and sing and go to the TV station to promote it. I said this is something I want to be a part of, and I was actually able to go on the campus…it’s amazing.”
According to Kilmer, TERI is still in the beginning stages of constructing the new campus. “We are just finishing building the first phase of it, which is our therapeutic equestrian program. I mentioned we already have one, but we knew when we built this campus that we would want the equestrian program on the campus as well.”
Soon, “we’ll be relocating our existing programs, which include non-public schools where we serve kids from all over the county of San Diego and several adjoining counties as well. Schools bus kids that have a high level of special needs—typically kids with autism these days—to us. We have two schools like that. We’ll be relocating the schools onto the campus.”
TERI’s administrative offices will also be located on the campus along with its Child Development Center. “The campus has wonderful features on it. We have a 23,000 sq. ft. fitness center, complete with a culinary institute and café. We have an aquatics center with multiple bodies of water, ranging from a Junior Olympic pool to therapy pools. It has a yoga center in it, a salon, and a spa.”
Kilmer said the “university-like campus” will accommodate clientele of all ages. “We are really building (something) like a lab school concept because this is what we do. We are always trying new methods of intervention and education and supports for our clientele, and we center our research around that as well.”
When Williams toured the existing campus, she was extremely impressed. “I mean you have to see it for yourself,” she said, adding, “It’s beautiful, and it’s been around for 30 years for helping people with autism and other disabilities and their families, and I was impressed with how interactive everything is.”
According to Kilmer, Williams received her first horseback riding lesson at their Therapeutic Equestrian Center. “I got so excited when I visited the Equestrian Center,” Williams said. “I said I want to get all my other celebrity friends to come, so I plan on bringing people there just to do some fun things.”
Kilmer noted that the program is currently located outside one of their residential programs, so they decided to go inside for a visit. “The residents who live there were still at home that morning; it was a weekend. (Williams’) interactions with them were so impressive. She had them all engaged, laughing away, and promised a slumber party. I can’t wait to see that!”
While there, one resident, who is middle-aged, really captured Williams’ heart. “She just had the spirit—not because of her disability—but she still possesses that spirit of a little girl who is all about combing her hair and her bedroom was really pretty like a princess, so I promised her that I would come back and have a slumber party and that I would bake brownies,” Williams confirmed.
Williams also hopes to get back for the next Soiree in April, if her schedule allows since she is currently touring in a play called What My Husband Doesn’t Know. If she cannot make it, “she’ll be taping (a segment) for us, so that we’ll have her singing and speaking about her involvement with the agency,” Kilmer said.
TERI is a wonderful organization to contribute to because “it is a program in which you can see where the money has gone,” Williams said. “You know where it’s going because you actually see it, and you’ll be proud that you helped and you’re a part of changing some lives because…having a disability doesn’t mean that your lifestyle should be less than somebody who doesn’t.
Williams commends TERI for offering a variety of options, like the arts program, for their clientele. “Just because one may have autism or another disability does not mean that they don’t sing, dance, draw. They might be good actors and actresses, you never know what we’re going to find.”
“To support our staff who are trained in direct services, we started hiring artists and musicians, and woodworkers, and developed a culinary program and just started evolving the program that way,” Kilmer noted.
Furthermore, “every job on the campus could be a potential job for one of our students, so we see a lot of partnering,” she added. “The vocational opportunities could be unreal; just our culinary institute alone is going to have opportunities for someone to learn to do everything from be a chef to someone who that knows how to set up and plan events to the busboy.”
Additionally, “we have six acres of organic gardens planned for the property. We’re doing our own farming. The whole campus is being built green and we’re going to use it to teach the community how our population is dedicated to being green and work to spread the word through our industry that we should all have a dedication to building and living green.”
Overall, “we designed (the campus) to be an international model and that’s how I want to see it function,” Kilmer said, adding, “I think that we need to share with the world the philosophy that all of us live on many spectrums, and there’s not an ‘us and a them.’ We truly think that a model like this can help affect change in the way the world looks at people with developmental disabilities.”
To learn more about the Training, Education, and Research Institute (TERI), visit www.teriinc.org.
*See http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/data.html
