Kendall County Children's Intellectual Disability Charity
Each year across the Nation the Knights of Columbus Councils each launch their own Intellectual Disabilities Charity drive. (ID Drive) This ID Drive is sometimes known as the "Tootsie Roll Drive" which benefits local organizations in each Council's respective area such as Special Olympics, Equine Dreams and many others.
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In the past annually one weekend each September you would see the volunteers and members of the Knights of Columbus out in public, at stores, intersections, and other areas wearing their famous yellow vests taking donations and giving away Tootsie Rolls. All donations are 100% given to the local area charities who benefit children with intellectual disabilities.
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Due to COVID-19 we are having to resort to other methods of collecting donations for these special children. Our Council "God's Divine Mercy" # 14463 will be running two methods of collecting donations.
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1 - For those who would like to donate and receive the classic Tootsie Rolls please use this link to order.
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2 - For those who would like to simply make a donation please use this link.
There are two local Kendall County organizations that receive 100% of all donations that we collect for this ID Drive. They are as follows:
Equine Dreams:
Equine Dreams is a 501c3 not-for-profit organization that provides Therapeutic Equine Assisted Activities to children and adults with special needs. Founded by the Mason Family, who were inspired by their son Andrew who has Angelman Syndrome, our program began in 1996 and is today a PATH Intl. Premier Accredited Center. We are dedicated to improving the quality of lives for those we serve. All services are free. We have a staff of 7 PATH Intl. Registered Instructors, 1 PATH Intl. Advanced Instructor, and multiple interns.
Order for Halloween
Kendall County Special Olympics:
KCSO Family & Friends provides sports training and competition in a variety of Olympic-type sports for children and adults with disabilities by giving them continuing opportunities to develop physical fitness, demonstrate courage, experience joy, and participate in a sharing of gifts, skills and friendship with their families, other Special Olympics athletes and the community.We also provide various opportunities for our members to grow socially.
Special Olympics training and competition is open to every person with a disability who is at least eight years of age and who registers to participate in Special Olympics. There is no maximum age limitation for participation.
We have been serving athletes with special needs since 1970.
We are proud of the fact that we are one of the few agencies in the state that has both school age and adult athletes. This is a blessing for both the parents and athletes; the parents get the support of people like themselves who have already been through what they are going through now and can help with things like SSI, PUNDS, guardianship, etc. and the athletes benefit by having a person like them to look up to.
Our athletes compete in seven sports annually: Snowshoeing, Swimming, Track & Field, Golf, Power Lifting and Bowling. All sports follow the same basic pattern: registration, training and practices, area competition, and then regional and/or state competition.
