Upworthy's book GOOD PEOPLE comes out on September 3, 2024 — take a look!

Shop
 Explore 

special olympics

Identity

Crowd hushes for a blind basketball player to hear the basket—then goes wild when she makes it

MLive/YouTube

Jules Hoogland heard the basket, then made her free throw shot to cheers from the crowd.

It's a common belief that disabilities make it impossible to do certain things. Sometimes that's true—but not nearly as often as people might assume. With the right support and accommodations, people with all manner of disabilities can participate in far more activities than society expects.

Take, for instance, a team sport like basketball. Can a person who can't see play that sport? How would they know where they are on the court? How would they know where to throw the ball or locate where the basket is? How could they keep track of where their teammates are and what they're doing?

Without a little imagination in answering them, those questions seem like they'd exclude blind people from being able to play basketball. However, when inclusion is the goal, human beings can figure out all kinds of ways to make the seemingly impossible happen.

High school basketball player Jules Hoogland is completely blind. As a junior at Zeeland East High School in Michigan, Hoogland plays on Zeeland's Unified Sports team made up of students with and without disabilities.

As she set up for a free throw, the crowd fell into a hush so Hoogland could hear the tapping of the basket so she could put the ball in the right spot. A fellow player ensured she was positioned for the shot, and Hoogland nailed it.

Watch:

Not only was it a great shot, it was an awesome example of what support and inclusion can look like from both a school and a community.

Unified Sports is a program by Special Olympics that promotes inclusion in sports by bringing people with and without intellectual or physical disabilities together to play on the same team. Unified Sports teams are made up of people of similar age and skill to create a level playing field and to make practices and games both challenging and fun.

The goal is not so much for those without disabilities to "help" those with; rather, it's a way to empower everyone to have fun together through sports. Teammates work together to play their personal and collective best for the good of the team.

According to Special Olympics, about 1.4 million people worldwide take part in Unified Sports. What a beautiful way for everyone to benefit from the fun and camaraderie sports can provide, and to provide a way for people of all abilities and disabilities to build bonds of friendship.

From Your Site Articles

A man with Autism was tired of rejected job applications, so he opened his own coffee shop

via Red, White and Brew / Facebook

Michael Coyne is a Special Olympics Athlete living with Autism, bipolar disorder, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

But what his character is defined by is determination.

After becoming an adult, Coyne had a hard time finding a job. "After I turned 21, I applied to multiple places. None of them would hire me," Michael Coyne said according to People.

So he enrolled in business classes through Rhode Island's Developmental Disabilities Council. After completing his classes, Coyne and his mother, Sheila, teamed up to open a coffee shop that's inclusive for people with disabilities.

The shop sells coffee made with locally-roasted beans as well as pastries, muffins, and calzones.

via Red, White, and Brew / Facebook

The coffee shop is called Red, White, & Brew and is connected to a craft store called Budding Violet that sells homemade products made by artists with disabilities.

RELATED: A viral story about David Bowie giving a boy with autism his 'invisible mask' is a must-read

Although it hasn't been open very long, it's already having an impact on the community.

"We've had parents come in with tears in their eyes with the hope that their young children will eventually be accepted into the community," Sheila added.

She believes the coffee shop gives parents "hope" they're young people will eventually be accepted in the community.

via Red, White, and Brew / Facebook

The company's commitment to inclusivity is part of its mission statement:

We are a family owned coffee shop serving up more than a cup of coffee. We employ people with developmental disabilities, encourage community engagement, and change the way the world sees those with disabilities. #IamABLE

RELATED: ICU nurse adopts a man with autism so he can have a life-saving heart transplant

Michael hopes that as the business grows he will be able to hire people with and without disabilities so they can work together.

"What I liked about the coffee shop idea is the community. We learn on both sides," Shiela said. "We teach people, 'Yeah, he has a disability, but look what he's doing. And he's out in the community getting his social skills.'"

In the end, for Michael, it's all about providing opportunities for himself and others.

"We just want to integrate," Michael said.

From Your Site Articles

He didn't know anything about disability. But what he learned would make a lasting impact.

True

When he enrolled in an eighth-grade elective, Seth had no idea it would totally change his life.

In fact, he hadn't expected to take an unusual elective at all — that is, until his dad, a science teacher at his middle school, brought up the idea of Seth taking a class called Unified Leadership, which focused on intellectual disabilities.

Seth is, in many ways, just like most teens you would meet. He plays baseball, video games, and likes to work on dirt bikes. All this is pretty standard fare for a teenager growing up in Swartz Creek, a small city in southeast Michigan.

So a class about disabilities was a bit out of Seth’s wheelhouse. But he said, sure, he’d take it.

The decision not only turned him into a social activist, it also had a ripple effect across his whole school.

All photos courtesy of Kayla Bright.

Unified Leadership was — and still is — a relatively new classthat's part of the Unified Champion Schools program, which is funded by the U.S. Office of Special Education Programs. In it, general education and special education students study together, helping promote a broader view of disabilities and social inclusion.

“They learn about different disabilities: what that means for the people who have them, what that might look like, the different challenges they may have,” says Kayla Bright, the special education teacher who leads the class.

Students were surprised to find, for instance, that celebrities — like NFL running back Jamaal Charles — face intellectual disabilities and still succeed at the highest levels, Bright says.

Of course, studying the issues in a classroom isn’t the be-all and end-all for unified learning.

Students also take part in public awareness campaigns, such as the “Spread the Word to End the Word” campaign, which challenges inflammatory language used against people with disabilities.

They put up posters in school and even brought to school a well-known public speaker, Anthony Ianni, a former basketball player for Michigan State University who was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder as a young boy.

Sports also fits into unified learning in another more active way. The program, through its Unified Sports initiative, also incorporates Special Olympics sports and related activities so that the students can play a number of sports together, including basketball, flag football, weightlifting, and track and field. Its explicit aim is to promote social justice in the more than 5,000 K-12 schools currently participating in the program.

This program helped Seth realize that kids with disabilities often face discrimination on the playing field.

Before taking the class, Seth hadn’t really considered this form of widespread discrimination. The troubling truth is that disabled students face a barrage of social obstacles at school. While bullying is rampant in the U.S., students with disabilities are at an increased risk.

After befriending the special education students in his class, it didn’t take long for Seth to better understand their struggles. He realized that disabled people are often treated as outsiders and disrespected, even though they shouldn’t be. He saw an opportunity to make a difference, to fight discrimination and to change others’ minds.

“Training together and playing together,” the Special Olympics website notes, “is a quick path to friendship and understanding.”

Studies back this up. They reveal that Unified Sports teammates often spend time together outside competitions, and as they get to know each other, the barriers break down between those with and without disabilities.

And this has certainly been the case for Seth, who has made good friends while coaching bowling and while competing in sports like shot put, weightlifting, and long jump.

But Seth knew that fighting discrimination meant more than just playing sports.

That’s why he has undertaken the hard work of helping curb his abled friends’ prejudices and helping them gain a greater sense of empathy for people with disabilities.

In part, this means fighting verbal harassment. Seth has seen his friends called the R-word by bullies. He knows that not only is this disrespectful, it feeds into the pervasive narrative that disabled students are outsiders, that they deserve ridicule — a narrative that can cause terrible harm and division.

And that’s why he’s become so passionate about the “Spread the Word to End the Word” campaign and urges others to disavow inflammatory language.

Though the Unified Leadership class just launched last year, it has already affected the rest of the school, thanks to the efforts of kids like Seth.

Kayla Bright, the class’s teacher, says that along with Seth, other general education students have begun hanging out with their special education peers. They've started seeing special ed students as potential friends, rather than outsiders to ridicule. Students who used to be shunned were now being included and treated with compassion.

It was a broad change that offers lessons for adults, too, Bright says — from the importance of empathy and acceptance to the language that we use to talk about disability.

Bright marvels at people like Seth, who are willing to stand up and confront discrimination rather than stand by and watch it happen. This fearlessness explains why Seth was recently awarded the Be Fearless Be Kind award from Special Olympics and Hasbro, the global play and entertainment behind hits brands like My Little Pony and Play-Doh.

Be Fearless Be Kind is the company's largest philanthropic initiative, designed to empower youth like Seth to have the empathy, compassion, and courage to stand up for others and be inclusive throughout their lives.

And though history books are filled with the stories of larger-than-life leaders, more often than not, the stuff of social change often boils down to these small acts of courage.

Befriending someone who’s different from you, repudiating hateful language, showing compassion for someone whose differences you’ve always feared — these are the things that result in real change.

That change is starting to happen on school playing fields. It's about time we all follow suit and get on the same team.

From Your Site Articles

Little girl in a wheelchair gets her very own matching Elf on the Shelf, created by mom ›

CARE

Heroes

How 9 upgrades from the tech world are changing lives in the real world.

True

Technology is always evolving to make tomorrow better than yesterday.

Businesses are able to run more smoothly, we can connect with people faster — even something as simple as ordering takeout has become, well, simpler.

But what we don't always see is the greater purpose the tech world's incredible advancements are serving. Technology can do great things to make the world a better place.

With it, education has become more accessible, social media has given a voice to the voiceless — even treating a patient halfway across the world has become possible.

Nonprofits have harnessed the power and potential of technology to create more good in the world as well. They are optimizing their operations, amplifying their voices, and expanding their critical programs and services to upgrade their communities and the world.

Here are nine awesome ways nonprofits are using technology to everyone's advantage.

1. Improving the health of mothers and newborns in India with do-it-all phones and real-time data.

Health care workers in Bihar, India, used to have to carry up to 38 backbreaking ledgers from home to home just to keep record of their patients' progress. But with help from CARE, the workers can now conduct checkups just by using an app on their phones.

Image via Windows/YouTube.

They can schedule visits and register and record real-time health information for mothers, pregnant women, and newborns, giving health care workers a quicker picture of what their patients' needs are and how they can improve their condition without missing a beat.

2. Mapping underwater habitats to create a more sustainable ocean ecosystem.

The Nature Conservancy's Mapping Ocean Wealth initiative is creating an exciting new way to study and map marine life.

Image via The Nature Conservancy, used with permission.

Researchers are creating detailed maps to better understand the value of ocean ecosystems and how they ultimately affect the livelihood of surrounding communities. The mapping provides people with more accurate information on how to maximize the ocean habitats and better sustain their ecosystems.

3. Breaking barriers and promoting inclusion for all of the world's athletes.

Special Olympics is stepping up their game by providing their athletes with tech to help them track performance, train smarter, and compete harder. On top of that, they can share their achievements online and connect with other athletes.

Image via Windows/YouTube.

In addition, they are using technology to bring athletes with and without disabilities together through Play Unified — a series of events across the country sponsored by Special Olympics. Through the beauty of sport, they're working — and playing — together to promote inclusion and combat the intolerance many individuals with disabilities face.

4. Building better school systems and improving childhood literacy in remote areas.

250 million children around the world lack basic reading and writing skills. Thankfully, Pencils of Promise has made it a mission to lower that number by building schools, providing quality educational programming, and supporting teachers in remote communities.

Image via Windows/YouTube.

Even better, they digitally track and measure the progress of each student, making it easier to see the effects of their lesson plans and adjust them to be more effective. Now with 363 schools around the world, Pencils of Promise continues to make progress toward its goal of providing access to quality education for all children.

5. Providing support groups for and connecting young people living with HIV.

The stigma surrounding HIV can be incredibly difficult to deal with for a young person. But Keep a Child Alive has found that technology can play a simple but extremely effective role in changing their outlook.

Image via Windows.

Using Skype, young people are able to share their experiences, challenges, hopes, and dreams with others just like them. Whether across town or across the African continent, they're creating a community of empowerment focused on fighting the impact of HIV on their families, friends, and communities.

6. Creating a global community of difference-makers and coordinating their efforts online.

Global Citizen's plan is straightforward: End extreme poverty, fight inequality, and fix climate change by 2030. Yes, it's bold, but they believe it can be done with the help of technology.

Image via Global Citizen/YouTube.

Global Citizen provides an online platform for people to connect with others, spread the message to world leaders, and fight for change. But they're also making it incredibly fun. Through gamification and the wildly successful Global Citizen Festival, doing great things has never been so engaging.

7. Creating more effective and meaningful connections between children and their sponsors.

Save the Children provides an early start to education for children living in poverty. And with technology's help, they can speed up the learning process significantly.

Image via Windows.

Connecting each sponsor with the children they're supporting is a key part of what keeps Save the Children's programs going, but it typically requires a lot of data transfer between offices that can take up to three weeks. With a more efficient online system in place, however, data can be accessed in real time, resulting in accelerated and improved interactions between sponsors and the children they're supporting.

8. Generating the largest educational event in the history of the world.

Code.org has a simple idea: Get kids to explore computer science with just an hour of code. It started out small but has since expanded to over 100 million students in 180 countries. Now anyone can organize their own Hour of Code around the world!

Image via Windows.

With an ever-evolving digital landscape, knowledge in computer science is extremely important for our future generations. No doubt, the world's largest educational event will only get bigger as the message continues to spread.

9. Giving a voice to young women around the world.

Malala Yousafzai has taken the world by storm with her relentless pursuit of education for girls around the world through her nonprofit, Malala Fund. Her organization has partnered with Nairobits, a Kenyan nonprofit that provides training in communications and technology to marginalized adolescent girls.

Image via Malin Fezehai/HUMAN for Malala Fund. Used with permission.

The program also provides job support and mentorship for these young women to improve their quality of life and assist their families in a way they never could before. As of 2015, they had 150 girls enrolled in the program, and that number has already doubled this year. Just imagine where they'll be in a decade!

All of these efforts are part of Microsoft's initiative to Upgrade Your World.

As part of the launch of Windows 10, Microsoft undertook a yearlong initiative to celebrate people and organizations doing great things to upgrade the world. They invested $10 million in 110 nonprofits and donated more than $10 million in technology to help them achieve more.

But it's not just these organizations that are benefiting — each year, Microsoft supports more than 100,000 nonprofits around the world with software and services to help them do more good.

In fact, your favorite nonprofit could qualify for a software donation from Microsoft, too. Visit microsoft.com/nonprofits for more details.

Without question, technology can be a powerful force that opens exciting opportunities for nonprofits. And if these organizations are any indication, we can't wait to see what the future holds.

Richard and Didi Dobbs didn't know much about Down syndrome when their nephew Sean was born with the condition in 1985.

The only thing they did know — and according to all of the information they could find on the condition — was that it was synonymous with "Mongolism." Which, as you can imagine, was less than reassuring.

"It was the '80s, and there was no Internet or anything," Didi told Upworthy. "I knew the very little that people in the '60s would know, which is that it was odd, or freaky, or scary."

Before the '80s, the average life expectancy for a person with Down syndrome was 28 years, and it was common for children born with the condition to be sent away and raised in institutions or group homes, segregated from educational opportunities and the public at large. In fact, up until 1984 — just a year before Sean was born — doctors were not legally required to give medically indicated treatment for life-threatening conditions to infants with disabilities.

Sean as a toddler. All GIFs via Richard Dobbs/Vimeo.

So the Dobbses tried to help their family, and others like them, the only way that they knew how: by turning the cameras on.

When Sean was 2 years old, they began to film his life with the ultimate goal of turning the footage into an informational video to help other families treading the then-uncharted waters of raising a child with Down syndrome. At the time, no such movies existed, at least not that they could find.

Over the years, they documented all the major milestones in Sean’s life. They filmed his speech and occupational therapy classes as he learned to walk and talk. When he took a liking to swimming, they brought their camera along to his high school swim meets. They followed him to the prom and to his high school graduation, when he became the first special needs student in the 2,000-person school to graduate on time.

Sean shaving before the prom.

Their archival footage was interesting to family and friends, but it wasn't really a story ... until they learned that Sean was going to compete in the National Special Olympics Triathlon in 2014.

Suddenly, the film that had been nearly 30 years in the making had a whole new shape as well as a name: "Sean So Far."

The Dobbses began to chronicle Sean's preparation alongside his triathlon partner, Troy — the only two athletes from Connecticut to compete in the national games that year. Their friendship would go on to become one of the lynchpins of the film.

Sean and Troy training together.

But the film took another unexpected turn when Sean was rushed into emergency spinal surgery six months before his big race.

During an obligatory physical, doctors discovered an atlantoaxial instability in Sean’s neck. This is a fairly common congenital complication in people with Down syndrome, although that doesn't make it any less serious.

Sean ended up missing eight weeks of training that winter while he recovered from the surgery. But as soon as the neck brace was gone and the doctors gave the word, he was right back at it, determined to get himself back into shape before the race.

Sean ended up taking home the bronze medal at the National Special Olympics that year, but his story didn't stop there.

Just two weeks after the race, Sean and Troy were invited to attend a black-tie dinner at the White House on behalf of the Special Olympics International Committee.

Sean was even given the opportunity to deliver a speech to President Barack Obama and his family. "His mouth had no muscle tone when he was a baby — we have footage of that — so this speech was a big deal!" Didi Dobbs said.

Sean meeting President Obama.

The Dobbses have seen a lot of changes in the 30 years that they've been working on "Sean So Far" — both in Sean himself and in the way the world looks at Down syndrome.

Didi recalled seeing a child with Down syndrome in a recent commercial for Target and noted how that kind of visibility goes a long way to normalizing the condition and building empathy for people with it. After all, that's how Sean has been able to do so many amazing things: by thinking that he could and having a family who supported that.

"Sean learned that everything is possible, not that he has limits," Didi said. "He knows he has Down syndrome, and he talks about it. Yes, it's a disability. But I heard someone refer to it as 'life in a different key.' And that's how I've come to see it."

Sean being interviewed about self-respect for the documentary.

As for Sean himself? He’s returned to his day job, enjoying some much-needed downtime.

2014 was a whirlwind of excitement, so he's taking some time to hang out with friends, go to the gym, and catch up on his favorite TV shows and hobbies.

You know, like people normally do.

Check out the trailer for "Sean So Far" below:

special olympics

Crowd hushes for a blind basketball player to hear the basket—then goes wild when she makes it

A man with Autism was tired of rejected job applications, so he opened his own coffee shop

RELATED: A viral story about David Bowie giving a boy with autism his 'invisible mask' is a must-read

RELATED: ICU nurse adopts a man with autism so he can have a life-saving heart transplant

He didn't know anything about disability. But what he learned would make a lasting impact.

When he enrolled in an eighth-grade elective, Seth had no idea it would totally change his life.

The decision not only turned him into a social activist, it also had a ripple effect across his whole school.

Of course, studying the issues in a classroom isn’t the be-all and end-all for unified learning.

This program helped Seth realize that kids with disabilities often face discrimination on the playing field.

But Seth knew that fighting discrimination meant more than just playing sports.

Though the Unified Leadership class just launched last year, it has already affected the rest of the school, thanks to the efforts of kids like Seth.

And though history books are filled with the stories of larger-than-life leaders, more often than not, the stuff of social change often boils down to these small acts of courage.

How 9 upgrades from the tech world are changing lives in the real world.

Technology is always evolving to make tomorrow better than yesterday.

1. Improving the health of mothers and newborns in India with do-it-all phones and real-time data.

2. Mapping underwater habitats to create a more sustainable ocean ecosystem.

3. Breaking barriers and promoting inclusion for all of the world's athletes.

4. Building better school systems and improving childhood literacy in remote areas.

5. Providing support groups for and connecting young people living with HIV.

6. Creating a global community of difference-makers and coordinating their efforts online.

7. Creating more effective and meaningful connections between children and their sponsors.

8. Generating the largest educational event in the history of the world.

9. Giving a voice to young women around the world.

All of these efforts are part of Microsoft's initiative to Upgrade Your World.

Without question, technology can be a powerful force that opens exciting opportunities for nonprofits. And if these organizations are any indication, we can't wait to see what the future holds.

One man's journey with Down syndrome shows how far we've come in 30 years.

Richard and Didi Dobbs didn't know much about Down syndrome when their nephew Sean was born with the condition in 1985.

So the Dobbses tried to help their family, and others like them, the only way that they knew how: by turning the cameras on.

Their archival footage was interesting to family and friends, but it wasn't really a story ... until they learned that Sean was going to compete in the National Special Olympics Triathlon in 2014.

But the film took another unexpected turn when Sean was rushed into emergency spinal surgery six months before his big race.

Sean ended up taking home the bronze medal at the National Special Olympics that year, but his story didn't stop there.

The Dobbses have seen a lot of changes in the 30 years that they've been working on "Sean So Far" — both in Sean himself and in the way the world looks at Down syndrome.

As for Sean himself? He’s returned to his day job, enjoying some much-needed downtime.

Researchers dumped tons of coffee waste into a forest. This is what it looks like now.

Naming twins is an art. Here are some twin names people say are the best they've ever heard.

5-year-old gave his mom advice for handling nerves. It was both adorable and spot-on.

Music teacher got two standing ovations and a BGT Golden Buzzer with 'Natural Woman' cover

Cat owner put a first person camera on their collar and accidentally filled the world with delight

Two brothers Irish stepdancing to Beyoncé's country hit 'Texas Hold 'Em' is pure delight