In the late 1990s, Kristy Schena was a speech-language pathologist for Bi-County Community Hospital in Warren. And she kept hearing the same question: How could children obtain affordable and accessible speech therapy during the summer?
Children had access to therapy from their local schools during the school year, but insurance companies refused to cover therapy over the summer. At that time, the self-pay cost at the hospital was $45 for 15 minutes of speech therapy. (Today, families might need to pay up to $400 per week for private therapy.) Parents who could not afford summer therapy watched their children lose much of the progress they made during the school year.
“If you have a typical developing child, it can take until the end of September to catch them up after being off for the summer,” Schena explains. “And if you have a child with special needs, it can take until the end of December to catch them back up.”
To combat this problem, Schena started
Kids On The Go in 1999. With sponsorships from local businesses and individual donors, the organization’s first camp at Bi-County Community Hospital provided free therapy to 13 children aged 3 to 6.
Today, Kids On The Go programs remain free. It now serves almost 300 children aged 3 to 17 with a variety of special needs. In 2018, the organization moved into its main location in St. Clair Shores where it offers programming, along with other locations throughout metro Detroit.
The bulk of the organization’s programming is still in the summer, but it now offers programs to children year-round. All services remain free, and the types of programs have expanded to include sports, dance, cooking, robotics, broadcast communications, and more.
Kids On The Go has grown from 3 staff members in 1999 to more than 60 today. Until 2018, Schena was the only administrator. “I was the only person running everything. And I knew that in order for Kids On The Go to grow for the future and to look beyond who was going to lead it, it was time to expand our team,” she says. Schena hired another administrator in 2018, and today the administrative team has four people, including Schena.
Schena and her staff needed to become more adept at fundraising to support the organization’s growth while keeping services free. Kids On The Go relies on a large fundraising gala every other year, smaller fundraisers, and large grants from organizations like the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan and William Davidson Foundation. Schena’s dream is to get a large endowment that will sustain the organization forever.
Ten years after founding Kids On The Go, Schena learned that her 14-month-old son has hypotonia (low muscle tone). Her son participated in Kids On The Go for three summers. “It put me in a whole different spot within my own organization,” Schena says. “It helped me be a better leader and understand more of what parents needed as support.”
Kids On The Go serves children with special needs, but it also has provided parents services such as financial and estate planning programs. And it benefits parents by giving them experiences that other parents might take for granted.
“When we started our baseball program, I remember walking out and seeing the dads and moms in the parking lot talking with their children and hanging out,” Schena says. She was struck by how these parents would not otherwise get the opportunity to watch their children play sports and bond with them over sports—as their friends might be doing with their kids.
Kids On The Go’s sports programs build confidence and fitness and teach the children new skills. The flag football program teaches children how to learn and run plays. The golf program has given the kids the confidence to go on golf outings with their parents—one child with autism even won his club’s junior championship.
The boxing program requires children who will not make eye contact with others to make eye contact and improve their balance. One preteen girl had balance problems that caused her to fall a lot. “Just after one six-week session she was doing the warm-up on the [agility] ladder on the ground and did not fall once,” Schena says. “Her parents said how much that class just in six weeks made a difference for her.”
Mental health awareness is greater now than it was when Schena founded Kids On The Go, and she has seen her programs create lasting benefits for participants.
“When we think about mental health, what affects kids the most? Friendships, right? Having friends is something that often our kids struggle with when they have developmental delays,” Schena says. “The thing that continues to inspire me is to see the friendships that have been made at Kids On The Go.”
This story is part of our Nonprofit Journal Project, an initiative focused on nonprofit leaders and programs across Metro Detroit. This series is made possible with the generous support of our partners, the Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Foundation, Michigan Nonprofit Association and Co.act Detroit.
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