Educator gets the word out while bringing money in
By Melissa Muntz Community Reporter

Southborough - When Michelle Richards was thinking of ways to increase funds for the New England Center for Children (NECC) while simultaneously increasing awareness about the school's work with autistic students, she decided to aim high - really high.

After a vigorous application process, the NECC has been selected to be an official charity for the 112th annual Boston Marathon.

Richards, a development coordinator for the nonprofit school in Southborough, said the school's mission is to provide education and individualized treatment for children with autism and other related disabilities.

It's an ambitious goal that she said the school just can't reach on its own.

"When traditional education students are taught within a typical education system, you have one teacher with 20 or 30 students, and children with autism just can't learn without intensive programming and very small [student to teacher] ratios," she said. "Because of this and the training involved for our staff , it's much more expensive to educate these students and we have to find alternate ways to supplement funds from school departments and the state so we can off er a state-of-the-art education to the children we service here."

(l to r) Michelle Richards and Cathy Welch oversee story time in the preschool room at the New England Center for Children. PHOTO/MELISSA MUNTZ

Admissions Director Cathy Welch said the school could not be happier with Richards's work to secure the charity status with the Marathon, not only because of the large financial gain it will have for the school but also because of the increased visibility the center, and its mission, will receive.

"Because there are more and more children who are being diagnosed with autism every day, it would be very difficult to find someone who has not been affected in someway, whether it's a relative or a neighbor or someone from your church," Welch said. "We just want to make sure that people really understand more about this issue that's really impacting everyone's world."

Autism is a developmental disability that aff ects the normal functioning of the brain, impacting development in the areas of social interaction and communication skills.

Richards said the funds raised by the school's team, as well as other runners who choose to run on the school's behalf, could raise as much as $300,000 over the next three years. The funds would be spent on specialized equipment, toys and instructional materials needed to properly educate this special population of students, as well as technology upgrades.

Both Richards and Welch said they're hoping the marathon will introduce people to the school and inspire them to continue supporting the center, which has an ultimate goal of helping people with autism all over the world.

"If we're able to do more research into how these children learn and the best way to teach them, we'll be able to off er information and training opportunities to people in New England, the United States and all over the world," Welch said. "We'd love to create an autism curriculum encyclopedia that we can share with everyone through the World Wide Web … as well as develop and build a new research and training center that will benefit many more people than we're able to do here."

The NECC team has 15 runners who must raise $3,000 each to participate in the Marathon Monday April 21. Anyone who would like to donate to the team can contact Michelle Richards at 508-481-1015 for more information.