Success stories are easy to tell and the Foundation’s partnership with the Alfond Youth & Community Center “AYCC” & Special Olympics Maine to launch the first Unified Champion Club in Waterville, Maine in the fall of 2019 is just that…a success story! The brainchild of Sawyer Boulette, Special Olympics Board Member and Director of Philanthropic Partnerships & Unified Programs at AYCC, was to expand on the Special Olympics Maine Unified Sports program and offer the “Unified” experience to everyone in the community. Here we are in early 2022 and the Waterville Unified Champion Club has over 140 participants!
The Foundation is always seeking to promote the Mason’s culture of volunteering and community building across Maine in impactful ways and in the fall of 2019 the Trustees approved $100,000 in funding to launch Unified Champion Club in Waterville with the hopes that it could be expanded statewide. Seeing the success in Waterville and the wonderfully positive impact the program is having on the community, the Trustees voted in January 2022 to commit an additional $150,000 over two years to fund the expansion of the program into more communities throughout Maine.
If you are interested in bringing the Unified Champion Club program to your community you can reach Sawyer at sboulette@clubaycc.org or Susan Scacchi, Executive Director for the Maine Masonic Charitable Foundation at director@MaineMCF.org.
Tim Shriver, PhD & Chairman
Special Olympics International
“The mission of the AYCC is laudable. But the vision to create a culture of inclusiveness and acceptance … is groundbreaking. AYCC will be the first club of its kind in the country. We hope to see it replicated broadly because it represents a model for the way every school, every club and every community could be – places of welcome, safety, and mutual respect — and filled with the joy of togetherness.”
