Monday, Oct. 20 the Student Government Association here at UCA attended and assisted Independent Living Services (ILS) in hosting a Halloween dance for disabled adults in the Faulkner County Area. ILS helps provide essential services for both physically and developmentally disabled adults. They help provide residential living and group homes, help teach job skills and provide transportation alongside with active efforts to help their clients with community engagement.
The Halloween dance served as a way for the local Independent Living Service’s clients to be able to get out and celebrate Halloween,dress up and dance with their local Conway community.
Every member of SGA was in attendance and assisted in dancing alongside the ILS community while also making arts and crafts. Student senators were seen and called by their costumes name when calling attendance. From ‘The Left Shark (from baby shark), Poison Ivy, Elmo and the entire Scooby Doo crew both the student government association and attendees were seen having a fun time in the student center ballroom.
“So this is just kind of a way that they get out into the community and, like, have some fun during Halloween, and folks really like to dress up, of course, as you can see, and love to dance.” Said Leslie Graybeal the head of Outreach and Community Engagement at UCA.
“They provide residential support and supportive employment support, but in our day program there, they come in on transportation, buses from our houses and from the community, and they are going through classes like art class.” Ashley Bruce who headed the ILS side of operations during the dance said “We are located in Conway on Robbins Street, and so these consumers all get together Monday through Friday to work on job training and life skills training and things. Then we like to have social opportunities for them after hours sometimes.”
Bruce said they were excited to be back at UCA to put on this dance.
Between the student government, attendees and ILS workers the room was packed. There were accessible arts and crafts where anyone was welcome to decorate a pre cut out pumpkin or tie together string ghost puppets. “Everyone here is a resident of Faulkner County or surrounding county, and we support adults from anywhere in their lifespan from 18 to I think our oldest client is 80” said Bruce. The Senators got up and danced with the ILS visitors.
Richard Ware, an SGA senator said “It’s the Halloween dance, and SGA is here to be able to fellowship with different members of our independent living community. And we just want to make sure that everyone here is having a great time. I’m here as a Jedi but my favorite costume here has to be the gentleman playing an accurate Buckingham Palace guard outfit, and he’s committed to the bit he’s just standing there”
”SGA is always looking for great ways to engage all their members in service, and so it was just a good partnership for us this year.” Said Graybeal