April is Autism Awareness Month

     It has been awhile since I have been able to blog for Tarique's Voice as much as I hate to say that!  Things for us have been rolling right along slowly but surely.  Numbers coming in for the website show about 10 visitors a day and we have been at a slow roll for new visitors on our Facebook page however we will continue to plug along and advocate.  On the bright side more and more folks locally are finding out about us and are interested in what Tarique's Voice has to offer.
     Starting this month we will be doing (4) 45 minute "bully educational"groups with the Zepf Center after school youth program.  After their educational group we will do a small survey and then follow up with the same groups at the end of their 8 week program.  I am so very excited about this and extremely grateful the Director has given us the opportunity to do this.  I have spent many hours looking at how mental health, school violence and bullies are linked together so this is a great opportunity for us to get in through the Mental Health doorways.  I look forward to being their point person when they are having issues with clients who have shown to either be a bully or a victim and providing education and support to those individuals.
     I am also excited with the possibility of getting Tarique's Voice into 2 local charter schools located in the Toledo area.  We are still working on this venture but it does look promising.  We have been asked to partner up with the local area representative for ASSE - International Foreign Exchange program, so the 3rd Sunday of May we will be sitting up a booth at the Oregon Fest located in Oregon, Ohio.  In May is also the area NAMI walk we are planning to hopefully get a team together and get out there and walk supporting NAMI and marketing Tarique's Voice at the same time.

Please feel free to contact us if you would like to help in any way is appreciated and a great donation write off for the end of the year, not to mention great.....

     We are hoping to receive enough donations to market Tarique's Voice further and getting the word out there.  As you know we do NOT charge the school's or any other organization that request our help a cent for us to come out and help.  We operate totally on donations and other support's.  Currently on our wish list we are looking for help to purchase a large back window decal that will cover the entire back portion of the car window.  Supplies such as paper, pens, coloring pencils, crayons, glue sticks, construction paper, small prizes such as "stickers, pencils".  We are also in need with help covering the day to day cost of running the website and the phone lines which is very minimal but still a cost we have to pay.

Threw my pitch now it is party time tomorrow

Well yesterday I had a meeting at the school for Tarique-Jabrielle and as always the team he work's with had their ducks in a row. I absolutely love his new case manager that was assigned to him because it feels as if she really does have his best interest at hand. It only made sense that she was assigned to him because he has like 3 classes with her.  At any rate I proudly wore Tariques-Voice arm bracelet's.  I threw it out there a few times during his meeting and then in the end had an in depth conversation about who Tariques-Voice is and what we were all about.  A few of the teacher's were very receptive to it and a few had the look on their face of wanting to be else where.  I see it this way at least I planted that seed.
There was one teacher however who was a little on the defensive side when I stated that Tarique and I was reading the book "Look me in the eye". She implied that it might be to Big of a book for his age.  I personally love the book, however with that being said it did make me think that maybe we should have a few more options when it comes to the book project.  His case manager at the end gave me a wonderful recommendation for a book to read so that will be my next project before I do recommend it.
The team is meeting again this Sunday to discuss upcoming projects, town hall meeting hopefully to spring out in April to kick off the month of Autism Awareness.

Tomorrow we celebrate our 4th child and her sweet 16.  There will be over 200 kids in attendance which I am super excited about. I am passing out bracelets, having an UpStander pledge for them to sign if they chose to do so and plugging Tariques-Voice right before the cake is served.  Yes I know, it is her sweet 16 but this is an audience that I can not pass up the opportunity to approach and announce the presence of Tariques-Voice in the Community.

This is a long over due party I think for just about everyone. The weather has been just horrible and it will be nice to eat, dance and laugh with the community.
Food is provided by our dear friend the amazing and talented Greg Ruffty and Extra Virgin Catering Company, Arab Food provided by Fettosh of Toledo, Sweets by Shatila Dearborn, Photo Booth by Toledo.Pix, DJ provided by DJOneTyme.  There has been so much put into this planning and the Hotel has been amazing with pulling together a team to make it happen the way we all had hoped it would.  So let's hope it goes without a hitch.

Upcoming Town Hall Meeting - Information to Come

          Town Hall Bully Meeting
It does take a "Whole Village" to raise a child and with that being said we want to hear what you have to say. We would like to have a town hall type meeting to see just what are your main concerns with the community, the schools and what can we do for you and your children?

Our main goal is to Educate, Support and Encourage those who are experiencing bully behaviors.  We want to be the voice for those who for whatever reason can not use their own voice.  Our organization would like to take this to a whole new level and advocate in our communities, schools free of charge.  Part of the barriers for the educational system is the cost.  Getting a variety of "Anti Bully" organizations into the schools is just to expensive and let's be honest where is the follow up? 

With Tarique's Voice we want to get into the school, show the kid's what impact Bully behaviors have on those who they target.  We then want to continue to follow up with particular kids who may have been identified as either Bullies or victims. Work with them in small groups such as a "Do you really know me" type of activity and continue to empower each one through out the entire year as needed to maintain them as anti-bully peers. The educational system is so overwhelmed with educating these kids, do they really have time to provide interventions like we can?  Can they afford to pay an additional counselor or a bully advocate to service these kids throughout the year on a large scale? NO!! They can't and that is where we can step in and again best charge FREE!

I do know that Perrysburg High school has started a group called "Jacket's against Bullies". We are in hopes that Tarique's Voice can possibly met with that group on a monthly basis and talk about the activities going on in the schools and help to educate and support that group.  Change it up lunches could go on in the grade schools and the list goes on and on. 

The best thing is that all this would be free of charge for the schools, we would solely be operating on fundraisers, donations from the communities and local businesses.  Tarique's Voice would never charge the schools a fee to do this. 

Tarique's Voice was created out of love and support for my son Tarique and the expriences he has had being a victim of continued bully behaviors.  As his mom I did not want to wait until he was dead to take action and because it takes a village to raise a child, I consider all those other children who are bullied in our communities our responsibility.  I would hope that our school's would take a look at the Anti-Bully Organization that was born in their backyard to continue to make a difference.

We are aiming to have our very first town hall meeting in April to help kick off Autism Awareness Month.  Details of the event to come soon, we hope to see you there.

Wristband Madness

Oh it is wristband time here at Tarique's Voice and we are getting excited. We have placed an order for 300 wristbands to get started. We put it out there and the winning statement was this:

Tarique's Voice - "One Bully at a Time"
Inside would have the website to promote the organization

It is so exciting to see things now starting to come together so that we can get into these schools and communities with the Anti Bully message before the end of the school year. We are hoping to hit the ground running when the school start's for the 2014-2015 school year.
Monthly meeting of the executives will be this week and I am super excited to see what these great minds have to share.
It's getting heated with these advocates and the passion is very evident and even more exciting to see the community positively respond to our message.

I can't wait to see what the new month's ahead have to offer.

Remember if you pass along any message please let these kids know....

You are not invisible.

www.tariques-voice.org

Look me in the Eye Project for Tarique's Voice

You know we at Tarique's Voice are so blessed. Today I received a wonderful message from Lori Mendoza who has been a top supporter for Tarique since day one. I mean this lady has never backed down for a second. Whatever the organization has needed she has been always more than willing to pitch in and we so appreciate her. I had shared the story of reading the book "Look me in the Eye" a life story of someone with Aspergers with my son Tarique. I felt that this story was all his words as if the author had sat and just wrote word for word whatever my son might have told him. I also shared that if this book was read by kids in school maybe they would think twice before they speak or assume. What does Lori do? She immediately started to think that what if we get a bunch of these books loan them to the junior high and get kids to read them. Those who read them, share their knowledge about it such as a small report or something of that nature then they are entered into a drawing for a Xbox or something big as such.
Right away she went on line asking for help and donations of the books. I am so proud to say that she stated some will be coming as quick as Friday.  Can you believe it? I am so excited to get this started and Tarique was over the moon with it.
It is people like her that make us work and we are just getting started in this grass roots movement.
Thank you, Thank you Thank you Lori

Today is a brand new day

Yes indeed it is a brand new day!
Everyone that personally knows me, knows that I have something called RCE which is Corneal erosion. 13 year's ago I was scheduled to have a corneal transplant. I had lost vision in my left eye from a tear that had occurred 2 month's prior. I remember being rushed to the hospital that night because it felt like something had reached in an pulled my eye ball clean out of the socket. I had never felt such terrible pain as that night. The emergency room doctor had told me that it simply was a bug that had flown in through the window and hit my eye. Sounds some what legitimate at the time. However, 2 month's later it just got worse and worse. I was surrounded in complete darkness for 2 month's. After many trips to the Kellogg Eye Center there was no other choice but to replace with a donor's cornea. This terrified me to no end as the recovery time would have been at least 1 to 2 year's with no guarantee that my eye would even accept the donor's eye. The night before the surgery I remember praying before I went to bed asking God to help me to see what I am missing. I really believed at that time he took my vision because I was not seeing what he wanted me to see in life at the time. I awoke startled, screaming at my husband that someone was in the house. Needless to say no one was in the house but my dream had terrified me so. My kids laugh at me to this day because I had dreamed that something was floating out of the closet and stood at the edge of our bed. This dream was so vivid and real that I had never been so terrified in my life.
The next day we went for the surgery and shocker was there would be no surgery that day or any other day. I was in fact carrying a child.  As you could only imagine my husband and I sat there without a word to utter from our mouth. I was told that year's before I could never have any other children due to a complication in my 4th pregnancy with my daughter.  So as you can see we were a little bit speechless.  I left the hospital that day not only carrying a new child, but still blind in the left eye.  I had accepted the fact that I would never see again through that eye and realized from that day forward I must do the best I can for my new child that would be coming and I had no place in life to sit and cry over not being able to see.
I realized that there were bigger plans for me and I must accept what comes my way and trust that everything was going to work out OK. At 20 weeks we realized we were having a boy and at the same time we  also heard that I was suffering from a disease that could either take my life or yet spare me yet again. We realized due to treatment's that were needed that our son would in fact be the last child we would every bare.  I felt like at the time it was a cruel twist. Take my vision, give me a child and take away the ability to ever have another, yet also lay on the table the plans that I may not even make it through to see this child grow up.
I accepted yet again what was given to me and I made the best of it. As my pregnancy progressed my vision began to come back slowly. I could see more and more each day. The doctor's stated that it must have been because I was pregnant. At that point I would take anything good that was handed my way.
When my son was born he was named Tarique-Jabrielle. We chose the name Jabrielle (Gabriel) because I felt that was the message I was obviously meant to see.  Throughout the year's we have been tested with many life threatening illness that I have personally suffered and came through. We also heard the heart breaking news of Tarique getting diagnosed with Autism.  I thought the day we heard that how cruel yet again.  You took my vision, you gave me Tarique now you take his voice and his view on the world. Ironically he is named after the messenger angel yet you take all his form of communications away from him.  But did he really?  I have always said that Tarique was born destined to do great things, that his life on this earth is for a purpose great and joyful.  Tarique may have Autism and he has been a target of bullies for many year's but yet he continues to excel and use his voice!
He always has a smile on his face and never a bad word about another. This is a child who has been through the wringer 1 to many times, but yet he always believes that there is great in people.  As his mother I sit and question why is that 1 child must suffer so.  Tarique's response to me was I know of a  man that has suffered way more than me and he did it for others. At the end of the day mom we must forgive. 
I found this strange to come from his mouth considering he was born Muslim.  How does he know so much about Jesus and the suffering he occurred for human kind?
From time to time my eye rips again and I have to go back to the surgeon to do a temporary fix. It is when this happens I sit back and evaluate my life, thinking I am going in the wrong direction and this is just a simple reminder to open my eyes.
With this being said, I tell you all this story of a time in my life so that you as well will open your eyes. The behaviors with the kids now days in school is behaviors that really don't need to happen and can be changed.  We as a community must make that change. Tarique's Voice mission is to make it where every child no matter who you are can attend school without fear and feel as if they belong. Please join us in making that happen.

We did it! We are live and starting the next step

We did it we are live in the life of the world wide web.  I have to admit I was very nervous when I stood there with my finger over the button, staring at the phrase blinking at me on the screen. "Publish, Publish, Publish".  On the other hand I could hear Andrea our CEO in my head telling me "take the website live already".
I just wanted it to be perfect and to the point. I wanted to get the message out there but yet part of me is such a perfectionist I felt like I just was not ready.  Then the other half of me pushed on and said "we gotta get the word out there, so hit the button already" and the rest is history.
After I hit the button I seriously felt like I just launched a rocket off into to space.  I realized at that very moment the War on the Bullies and their behaviors has just taken on a new life of it's own. This was now the real deal and there was no turning back. But do I want to turn back? I mean seriously do we even have that luxury to even begin to turn back and just stop the fight? Absolutely not! The wheels on this bus is just getting started and to think we are not even in full thrust yet. Every waking moment all I can think about is what new programs can we start, what schools can we approach, churches or community centers can we get our foot in the door to get this issue under our thumb.
I have heard and I have read some very disturbing stories over the past few months. Some say these kids are just to soft they need to buck up and deal with it. Kids are just to sensitive now days and well it just goes on and on. But I say to you, Have you turned on the news lately?  Have you seen what is going on all around us? Everyday we are seeing a school, a mall or other public place being shot up by someone who just had enough.  Kids committing suicide because they just can't take it any longer.  What is wrong with our society is that some folk feel it is OK to just turn a blind eye or blame the victims, when I am saying that we as a community need to stand up for not just the victim but for all involved.  Bullies are not born bullies so what can we do to change their way of thinking. How can we help them? I firmly believe that if we start with the source (bullies) and figure out what motivates them to behave the way they do we might have some small hope. 
Our children depend on us and I will not sit a second longer regretting the fact that I could have done something however chose not to.  This is my mission and I would not have it any other  way.
Here is to a wonderful journey in making  a difference. I can't wait to see what the future holds for Tarique's Voice.