Students Take Action After Learning About Lack of Resources for Peers With Autism

When students at East Hartford High School in Connecticut were given an assignment to create a project to better a community for their Human Rights and Law class, they chose to raise money to purchase new iPads for their peers with autism.

The teens recently learned iPads can assist nonverbal students in developing language and life skills, but they were shocked to learn their school offered just two iPads for 19 students with autism to use.

“Every human deserves an education,” student Alina Figueroa told the Hartford Courant. “I was so surprised when I learned they didn’t have enough iPads.”

East Hartford High special education teacher Julie Rowland explained how helpful the devices can be. “[An iPad] promotes language, it promotes behavior, it really helps them with those life skills,” she told the paper. “You can enlarge things for the kids who don’t have an easy time seeing, you can change subjects quickly without having to print things out or plan too much. The possibilities are endless because it’s portable.”

On the project’s Go Fund Me page, the class wrote, “[We] want to make positive change for people in our community.”

So far the class has raised $655 of its $1,500 goal.