Easter Seals

Easter Seals is a United States based nonprofit organization involved in charitable activities by assisting more than a million children as well as adults suffering from autism and other disabilities. Easter Seals has a large network of about 550 service sites spread across the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico and Australia, where they provide services, treatments and therapies to those with various disabilities and special needs. People suffering from various physical as well as mental disabilities and special needs caused at birth or caused due to disease, injury or aging are provided assistance by this organization.

Easter Seals has been involved in the philanthropical activities for more than 90 years and has been involved in various services which includes child development centers, job training as well as physical rehabilitation services for the disabled and many more in order to improve their standard of living and to help them overcome the challenges they face in their everyday life due to the disabilities and achieve their goals.

Easter Seals has been constantly undergoing development. It started working towards helping children and adults affected by polio, training them and helping them to live independently by administering various therapies and treatments. After observing a trend of predominantly increasing cases of autism, the organization has also been involved in assisting people affected by autism since the past twenty years. At present, Easter Seals is providing assistance to more than a million people who are suffering from autism, along with other special needs and disabilities that people suffer in United States and various other parts of the world.

They specialize in offering custom services to the patients which is individualized, innovative and is tailor made to suit the specific needs of the community. The various primary services offered by Easter Seals include medical rehabilitation, children's services, employment and training, camping and recreation and adult and senior services. The organization employs more than 23,000 employees along with thousands of volunteers who work towards a common goal of betterment of the disabled.

Purpose

The Easter Seals nonprofit charitable organization is one of the most well known organizations headquartered in Washington D.C and Chicago. The organizations mission is to ensure that people with all kinds of disabilities and other special needs are provided with equal opportunities to live, paly, work and learn without difficulty.

The organization strives to run by the values such as commitment, integrity, respect, shared purpose, excellence customer focus and independence. The organization believed that charitable service is the central core of the mission and they are committed to serve the people for whom other sources of help do not exist. The services are provided with confidentially, ethically, and with complete commitment to integrity of the person. The organization helps its customers hold high moral standards and do what is ethical in every circumstance. There is a deep sense of respect in whatever the organization's volunteer do by valuing the uniqueness of every individual.

Easter Seals share a sense of purpose that resonates throughout the organization. They work in a unified manner in order to achieve this shared purpose. The organization believed that it takes confident, excellent and responsible people who can value the importance of excellence. The organization provides assistance to the people having various disabilities and special needs and their families in order to help them lead a quality life.

Easter Seals also offer various services which include medical rehabilitation services to the disables in order to help them gain mobility and hence greater independence and also to sharpen their skills. The rehabilitation program includes speech therapy, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, early intervention and many other therapies.

In order to earn their living and to be independent, it becomes necessary for the disabled adults to find employment. Most of the disabled or differently able people fail to secure jobs because of attitudinal and accessibility barriers. Easter Seals, in their employment and training program work closely with the individuals to identify their goals, objectives, skills, and needs and in turn train them to make them employable and help them secure jobs.

Easter Seals has been running adult and senior services for some time now and it provides home and community based services to adults and seniors with developmental disabilities, dementia, Alzheimer's and other age related disorders. The organization provides information and support to the families and caretakers of the affected seniors and adults.

History

Easter Seals, an international charitable organization which provides assistance to people suffering from autism and other disabilities, was founded by Edgar Allen in the 1919. Edgar Allen a businessman based in Ohio was deeply moved by the death of his son in a road accident due to the non availability of adequate medical facilities which made him sell his business to start raising funds in order to open a hospital in his hometown Elyria, Ohio.

Edgar Allen after learning that the disabled children generally grow up in the hiding, he decided to provide assistance to them, and it is during this time that he founded the National Society for Crippled Children. The National Society for Crippled Children launched its first seals campaign to raise funds during the period of Great depression, in the spring of 1934 by selling seals which can be purchased by the donors and paste it alongside the normal postage stamps on the letters and envelopes. The Seals campaign raised around $ 47000, thanks to the overwhelming public response which led to a nationwide expansion of national Society for Crippled Children. The mission was later broadened to include adults as well in the year 1944, and it managed to reach all the states in United States by the year 1950.

In the year 1952, the organization adopted the Easter Lily seal, designed by Ruth Miley McClellan as its official symbol and by 1967. The Easter seal had become very popular among the public that the organization decided to formally adopt the name 'Easter Seals' and has been operating under the same name ever since.

The organization receives funding from various sources and it makes use of those funds for providing assistance and running other programs for the disabled adults and Children across its various facilities in the United States, Canada, Australia and Puerto Rico. The organization also provides assistance and rehabilitation services to the injured war veterans had helping them cope with the injuries and transition to normal civilian life.

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