With its first major structures completed, the Island Autism Group will welcome community members to an open house this Saturday to tour the West Tisbury campus that has been over a decade in the making.
Island Autism has recently completed “phase one” of the project, executive director Kate DeVane said.
The central “hub house,” a large, two-story building designed for school-age and adult programming, is finished and in daily use, Ms. DeVane said. A large barn, garden and chicken coop, which together make up a working farm, are also finished, she said.
When the Island Autism Group formed in 2009 with the goal of bolstering Island schools’ programming for young students with autism, an independent campus was still a far-off dream, Ms. DeVane said.
“The mission has always been the same, which is to create healthy, happy, productive lives for kids,” Ms. DeVane said.
Her son, now 20, has nonverbal autism and lives in a facility off-Island. With the programming and support that the new campus will offer, Ms. DeVane hopes that her son, and other families, will be able to return to the Island or stay on the Island.
Hub house facilities include a commercial kitchen, an upright piano, housing for a full-time program administrator on the semi-private upper floor, and aerial and traditional yoga studios.
Many of the facilities, such as the kitchen and an antique wall of post office boxes, are designed to build skills that young people with autism can bring with them into the workforce. Members of the program can help sort mail, work on the small farm collecting eggs or partner with commercial chefs in the kitchen to prepare food for their peers or for public sale.
“We see everything as a job training opportunity,” Ms. DeVane said. “The jobs will start here. We’ll train people how to do it, and then we kind of ripple them out into the community . . . . We’re setting them up for success.”
Island Autism will also emphasize physical activities such as yoga and horseback riding that serve therapeutic functions for many young people with autism, Ms. DeVane said.
Ms. DeVane estimates that approximately 300 men and women on the Island have autism and would be eligible for the programming at the new center. Although weekly programming at the center nominally costs $500 each week, about three-quarters of those enrolled receive financial aid, funded by community preservation funds and private donors, Ms. DeVane said.
Ms. DeVane said that Saturday’s open house will give the organization a chance to welcome and thank everyone who has helped bring the first stage of campus construction to completion. Benefactors range from private and business donors to Community Preservation Committees to local contractors, she said.
“All the people who’ve gotten us kind of this far, we wanted them to have a chance to come and see what it looks like, because we think it looks pretty great,” Ms. DeVane said.
Already, “phase two” of campus construction in underway. Island Autism is in the process of building two four-bedroom group homes for adults with autism over the age of 22, who have aged out of state care.
The open house is from 2 to 5 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 14.
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