We need you to make waves of good!

This year, the Help Autism Association is enrolled in the ninth edition of the traditional Swimathon event, with the Help Home project – a space to practice for a future home, where adolescents and young people with autism gradually learn, through long rehearsal, life skills independence. Help Home is one of the few solutions created in Romania for teenagers with special minds, where they learn to trust that they can be alone and that together with others, life is more beautiful. You can read more about Help Home and about the power of I CAN ALONE here: https://www.helpautism.ro/ce-facem/helphome

Swimathon is more than a community development platform. It is our shared trust that together we are changing the world, where we are most needed. Every year, Swimathon sets the good in motion, gathering swimmers-fundraisers for various humanitarian causes. And now we have the opportunity to make waves of good for special minds. Good is a team sport and we are all part of this story. If you want to know more about what Swimathon means, access https://echipa.helpautism.ro.

How will the event take place? Given the current context, this year’s Swimathon will be a virtual event. We would have been happy to make physical waves, but we also see the opportunity in the online format, where imagination and creativity have no limits. More precisely: you can swim anywhere and anyway. You can swim in the pool, in the tub or in the sea, in the bathtub or in the air, with waves without splashes. You can do a dance with movements that mimic the dynamism or calm of the waves, or you can make a drawing that suggests sea waves. And the list can be long. We can’t wait to see how we tell the Help Home story together.

How can you support us in this new journey? Tell the Help Home story to your colleagues and invite them to join the Swimathon event, forming a team to make waves of good for teenagers and young people with autism. Here are some ideas you can consider in relation to your coworker:

• Encourage your colleagues to register as swimmers and to pay the registration fee of 80 lei per participant. We know how much personal example means, be the first to sign up. You and your colleagues can form teams between two and ten swimmers-fundraisers, but individual participation is also possible. The deadline for team registration is May 21, and registration can be done here: https://swimathonbucuresti.ro/

• The company can double the amount obtained by your team after raising funds through a sponsorship, showing them that together you can make even more waves of good. We set out to raise 37,500 lei together through this event, to cover a month of operation of the Help Home program. We dream that each swimmer / team will raise 1000 RON, which will ensure two weeks of participation in the program for a teenager with a special mind and through which he will take another step towards autonomy. We know that any amount, no matter how small, matters a lot, but we know just as well that we can make huge waves, even financially. In our experience, this option will motivate the team to be as active as possible during the “competition”, the waves of good being more and implicitly bigger. And we will be eternally grateful for every moment of independence given to special minds. Together we can help them say I CAN ALONE!

• May 21 – June 25: we make waves of goodwill – fundraising period. During this time, using online communication channels, swimmers will raise funds for young people with diverse minds, inviting friends, acquaintances, relatives, colleagues and relatives to donate to Help Home.

• June 26-27: the actual event, we will make together the last waves #ICanAlone , celebrating the good we managed to do this year at Swimathon.

We hope our invitation excites you as much as it does us.