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Autism affects 1 in 36 children in the United States, and over 30,000 individuals in our community.
NFAR is here to help! NFAR is a 501 (C) 3 nonprofit organization, EIN 20-0538863 based in San Diego, CA. Founded in 2003, we are dedicated to improving the lives of autistic individuals, and helping them to reach their potential. We serve over 2,200+ individuals and their families in San Diego County yearly and nearly 6,000 community members through our annual Race for Autism. NFAR has always sought to create programs that fill a service gap for autistic individuals and improve their learning, social, and employment opportunities. Race for Autism When NFAR started, few people had heard of autism, and resources were limited. In 2005, we hosted our first Race for Autism to help spread awareness and raise funds for local programs and services. We helped to fund early identification and educational outreach programs so that families could get the resources needed to jump start their child's foundational learning skills, and help improve their learning trajectory. At that same time, classroom educators were often isolated and working to support their autistic students needs on their own. To help, NFAR started our Educational Workshops so that educators from across districts could share and learn best practices. We also initiated the Teacher's Grant Program so that educators could purchase equipment, specialized programs and materials to enhance their autistic student's learning during school time hours, and to make the learning process more fun! Through our NFAR Community Projects Program, we have supported over 100 community initiatives in early identification, education, theater and Improv., sports camps, family camps, music therapy, martial arts, social skills training, driving instruction, vocational training, parent education, peer mentor programs at the college level, and more. Vocational Training For the past ten years, NFAR has been addressing the barriers neurodivergent individuals often face when seeking employment. We have worked with hundreds of individuals to prepare them for a wide variety of jobs, in areas such as software quality assurance, IT, cybersecurity, light manufacturing, office work, and data processing. Our signature vocational training programs are providing comprehensive, hands-on training that combines hard skills with soft skills needed in the workplace, and useful for any career. At the same time NFAR is partnering with companies across a wide range of industries to open the doors to employment for neurodiverse individuals, and helping to create a more equitable, diverse and inclusive community for all! |
THANKS to the support of people like you, NFAR has invested more than 2.4 MILLION dollars to improve the options and opportunities of autistic individuals.
Please join us for the Race for Autism, and help make a difference!
To learn more about NFAR and its programs, please go to www.NFAR.org.
