January 23, 2023 - Tosha Thorpe told us the history of how Pawsitive Friendships originated. Pawsitive Friendships was founded by Tosha Tharp -Gaitanis in 2014. When her son was diagnosed with High Functioning Autism/Asperger’s Syndrome at the age of four, she quickly realized that no diagnosis was “one size fits all” and that each child should be considered and treated on an individual basis. The idea for Pawsitive Friendships occurred to her while she and her son were practicing their regular home exercises. He was VERY non-compliant because the exercises were difficult and because he was unable to communicate his feelings. When he asked to have Zoe, their French Bulldog, join him on the swing, Tosha was stunned. Both boy and dog loved every minute of it! From then on, Tosha incorporated Zoe into other exercises, and soon his compliance ceased to be an issue. Rather than focusing on what he couldn’t do, he was focusing instead on Zoe. To learn more of this remarkable story click HERE.

 

Our treasurer, Rob, presented Tosha with a check to support her work. 

 January 16, 2023 - Mark Henderson is President's Professor Emeritus of Engineering at Arizona State University at the Polytechnic School in the Ira A Fulton Schools of Engineering. He is also a co-founder and Board President of GlobalResolve in the Barrett Honors College. He also serves on the board of the Maasai Education Research and Conservation Institute in Kenya. Mark described his experiences Kenya and used a slide show to document the project.  The sound is not available for the slide show but can be seen by clicking HERE.  (The technology for this presentation was malfunctioning so there is a large section of dark screen in the middle - if you are interested and patient, you can fast forward to the latter part of the presentation to see the slide show)

 January 09, 2023 - Donna and Ethan Dunsford of Ahwatukee, who organized Horizon Honors Elementary and Secondary School’s first two robotics teams – then led each of them to win two trophies in a recent STEM competition, described their experience and showed us a great video of the process.  Unfortunately the video, which can be seen HERE does not have sound.  Their presentation was well received by the club and there were many questions and comments. Click HERE.