Giving Guide: Special Olympics Arkansas

Lakeside High school students Brace Lester (left) and Caleb Dean (right) celebrating after a great play during the AAA State Basketball Tournament’s Unified Champion Schools division game. Unified Champion Schools is an initiative aimed at encouraging inclusion and accepting attitudes in schools using unified sports (a team made up of students with and without intellectual disabilities) as the foundation.

MISSION

Special Olympics Arkansas is an organization that unleashes the human spirit through the transformative power and joy of sport every day around the state. Through programming in sports, health, education, and community building, Special Olympics Arkansas is changing the lives of people with intellectual disabilities, solving the global injustice, isolation, intolerance and inactivity they face. Special Olympics Arkansas is providing opportunities for more than 15,000 athletes and 5,000 volunteers in all counties across the State of Arkansas.

Special Olympics Arkansas provides year-round sports training and athletic competition in a variety of Olympic type sports for all children and adults with intellectual disabilities.

FUNDRAISERS AND EVENTS

Special Olympics Arkansas hosts 240 competitions and numerous health education events and screenings year-round. Our largest event of the year is Summer Games, hosted every May in Searcy at Harding University. Join us for our upcoming events:

Sign up to be Freezin’ for a Reason at one of our twenty-four Polar Plunge events across the state from December-March. (See website for details.)
Enjoy a laid back atmosphere for mingling while you bid on 300 silent auction items during our signature event, Charity Olive Hour, Oct. 19, 6 p.m. at Next Level Events.
Be a fan in the stands at any of our competitions year-round.
Sign up to Play Unified, and compete alongside Special Olympics athletes for a gold medal.

Visit SpecialOlympicsArkansas.org for more than 100 fundraisers you can attend statewide!

GIVING OPPORTUNITIES

Make 2018 the year you become a fan! Special Olympics USA Games will be hosted by Seattle, Washington in 2018. Team Arkansas will compete in eleven different sports July first through the sixth.

Show your support for the one hundred and twenty member delegation by giving your time, expertise, product or cash donations. Please also encourage and engage with the team through social media.

In addition to supporting Team Arkansas we have year-round opportunities to get involved. Email Camie@SpecialOlympicsArkansas.org for more information.

OUR IMPACT

15,000
Athletes
ages 8 & up

240
Competitions annually

20
Sports offered

450
Health Care professionals trained

12,000
Athletes receiving health education

10,000
Young athletes ages 2-7

86¢ of $1
Straight
to athletes