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Programs

Friendship Circle provides remarkable programs for friends, families and volunteers of all ages. Take a look and give us a call! We are happy to help set you up with the right group and introduce you to some amazing new friends!

Upcoming Events
Calendar

Ample volunteer assistance makes our monthly events and outings a pleasurable experience for both parents and children.

The outings are held at various locations around San Diego with activities for the entire family including art, crafts, games, music, dance, yoga and sports.

Simultaneous informal or formal parents’ workshops are often conducted. Additionally, most local amusement facilities, museums, zoo, etc., provide substantial discounts to our families and volunteer chaperones are usually admitted at no charge.

Shooting Stars All-Girls Performing Arts Club

Thinking of activities they themselves would enjoy, two of our teen volunteers created a venue for special needs kids and teen girls to come together and explore the world of performing arts. Completely self-directed, the two organized the program, designed fliers, planned the curriculum and recruited friends, volunteers and local performing-arts experts to participate.

Camp Let Loose

This program was completely conceived of and initiated by teen volunteers. Teens organized the camp, recruited the campers, and designed the camp brochure. They also instituted a counselor training program to train the higher-functioning teens with special needs to serve as junior counselors. After their training, they are paired up one-on-one with full counselors, and spend half their day helping and half their day engaged in fun activities themselves.

Friends @ Home

This program is similar to a “big-brother, big-sister” program, but for children with special needs. People with special needs frequently have challenges in social arenas and develop few friends. Further, their families are often isolated from their community because of the challenges involved with raising a child with special needs.

Through the F@H program, teenage volunteers visit children with special needs in their homes on a weekly basis, engaging them in a variety of activities based on the individual child’s preferences. The teens are there to provide friendship – not therapy – just friendship. For the child with special needs, friendship is not easily attained and these visits provide a rare opportunity to connect with another person in a social context.

Friendship Dojo

A brand new monthly club dedicated to self-defense, active lifestyles and fun for youth and teens. Created by our Teen Leadership Board Vice President, this program is geared toward broader interests and trying new things together as friends!

Gymnastics Club with UCSD *NEW*

Our newest addition to monthly programming! Join FC in collaboration with UCSD for a fun, active class with college students, teens and youth! Active classes help boost strength, coordination, self-confidence and more.

Women’s Circle, Men’s Club & Adult Circle

Three evenings monthly our adults with special needs meet for varied activities: outings, exercise, cooking, music, art, crafts, Jewish holiday celebrations, social dinners, etc. This program provides an ideal setting for building life-long friendships, as well as a vital support network for dependent and semi-independent adults.

Young Adults Club. *NEW*

A brand new monthly program for older teens and 20-somethings to meet and hang out with people their age! This program provides unique activities for millennials. Let’s get coffee, see a movie, picnic at the beach or just chill out at the park and chat!

Teen Awareness Workshops

It all begins with our volunteers! We provide fun, “hands-on” workshops for students at schools and youth groups, where we simulate different disabilities, and where the students role-play what it would be like to have challenges. We then discuss how their current activities might be modified to include those with challenges. The focus is on how they can apply what they have learned in the workshop, in their own lives, in their schools, congregations, and communities.

Teen Volunteerism & Training

Friendship Circle is also committed to developing teen leaders. Most teens learn leadership skills through life experiences. Friendship Circle volunteers are given opportunities to learn these skills through sharing friendship with and creating opportunities for inclusion for children with special needs.

Several of our teen volunteers have exemplified leadership through their involvement with Friendship Circle. Some have earned college scholarships by creating programs for children with disabilities. The opportunities for teen leadership are as limitless as your imagination. We look forward to seeing what ideas our teens come up with next and to helping them and their friends succeed.

Teen Leadership Board

Friendship Circle’s Teen Leadership Board is our newest addition to reward our most involved teen volunteers with leadership positions. As a Board Member you will learn valuable life skills such as: planning, communicating, coping with change, managing time and motivating others. You will develop your leadership skills and build self-esteem while helping others with special needs to grow and develop their own special abilities. This is fantastic opportunity to show for scholarships, resumes and more!

Parent Support – Coming Soon!

Sibling Support – Coming Soon!

Friendship Circle SD is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit nonsectarian program. Founded and run by local Jewish parents who have children with special needs, we have been providing services and programs for the Jewish and non-Jewish special needs community since 2005.

We currently serve 150 families with the assistance of our 400 specially-trained teenage and adult volunteers.
The Friendship Circle creates meaningful and lasting connections between families with special needs children, teens and adults and their non-disabled peers. Using a unique approach to recreational and social inclusion, teen and adult volunteers share community activities, weekly home visits, and holiday celebrations with individuals with disabilities. Deep bonds develop and barriers disappear. From being different and misunderstood, deprived of the basic fun of youthful play to feeling the joy of having a special friend and being part of a group, our participants with special needs experience the most fundamental necessity of life: friendship. Through outreach and training in the community, Friendship Circle is able to educate the community about the valuable contributions individuals with differences have to offer when we include them in our community.

No Show & Late Cancellation Policy for Free Ticket Opportunities
1/19/17

There are many generous organizations that give us free or greatly discounted tickets. We have wonderful volunteers who make time in their busy schedules to help us. We could not give our families the exciting opportunities that we do without this support.

Many of the organizations that give us tickets track how many of the tickets we use. If we don’t use a high enough percentage, they stop giving us tickets. If a volunteer comes to an event and the child, they were assigned to doesn’t come, next time we may not have enough volunteers. Most of the Friendship Circle families are responsible about RSVP’ing and only cancelling in case of illness. A few families are putting our activities at risk for the others.

We understand that there are emergencies that occur.  From now on, with the exception of illness or a genuine emergency ( an emergency is NOT, “I forgot it’s my friend’s birthday” “Someone offered me tickets to X”), if you sign up for 2 events and cancel with less than 1 week’s notice, to sign up for future events, you will need to give us a credit card, you will be charged for the full price of the event if you are a no show.

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