Autism Society Will Join Autism Community to Call for Autism Understanding and Acceptance this April

February 16, 2011
By Amanda Glensky

On World Autism Day, April 2, 2011, the Autism Society will join the autism community to unite in one global message calling for all people to truly understand and accept autism. This will be a grassroots movement dedicated to autism understanding and acceptance.

Autism awareness stories in the media largely focus on children with autism, but people with autism are children, teenagers, adults, men, women, scientists, programmers, engineers and the unemployed; some live in care homes – or don’t have a home at all. People with autism have their unique sets of strengths and weaknesses, and they also have incredible potential. Autism is a part of who they are. Unfortunately, too many are also bullied, judged or ignored.

On April 2, the Autism Society will join other organizations, charities, self-advocates, family members, support groups, parents and friends to challenge others to understand and accept people with autism. We hope you will join us as well. If we can unite the autism community, we can be a powerful force to implement the changes needed to improve lives.

How you can help:
Visit Autism Understanding and Acceptance on Facebook and click on the "Open Letter”  tab. Copy the letter that you see there. This is the one united message that the autism community will share with the world.

Then, look to the bottom where it says "fill in the rest with your experience,” and write what autism means to you. Whether beautiful or ugly, we ask you to write your own personal story for the world to read.

On April 2, 2011, we challenge every single person in the autism community to submit their letters to blogs, media centers, RSS feeds, fan pages, groups - anywhere they can - so that when the media looks to the autism community for information, they find us all sharing one united message.

We thank you for helping us improve the lives of all affected by autism.