In the past, children and students who are displaced, struggle with home insecurity and homelessness, or are otherwise disadvantaged have been excluded from easily attending extracurricular activities due to transportation barriers. Afterschool programs and sports typically require late evening or even nighttime transportation. That barrier has finally been breached by the Corvallis School District and Dial-A-Bus.
This school year, we began providing transportation for school sports and clubs regardless of the late hours and allowed children to participate in a way they hadn't thought possible.
Please help us to continue providing this service to the children of our community and donate today!
The District called asking us to help some kids get home from swim team practice, which sometimes ended 3 hours after we are closed. Since our management team learned a long time ago to say "yes" to any request from the District and worry about the details later, they got to work right away.
The next week, our drivers were finding themselves at the Aquatic Center at 8:30 PM to drive home two sisters who had no other transportation options. When we found out that the sisters didn't have parents, lived in a group home, and neither had swum in their lives before they fearlessly joined the swim team, this transportation "problem" that we had been faced with became a transportation privilege. Drivers who had the day off called in to make sure the girls had a ride home; drivers readily offered to pick up the shift, etc.
Despite the staff enthusiasm, it was the sisters themselves who put their lives in perspective for us when they asked one of our drivers something long the lines of, "Thank you for the teddy bears, but we have lots of those. Could you be our friend?"