Today we’d like to introduce you to Lauren Specht and Melissa Peterson
Hi Lauren Specht and Melissa Peterson, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
We are twin sisters from Germantown, TN. We were born and raised in the Memphis area and have always had a passion for empowering people with disabilities. When we were 15 years old, we started volunteering with the special needs ministry at our church. We immediately fell in love with this community, and it has inspired our journey into adulthood. Three years after we began our volunteer work, we decided to start a summer camp for people with disabilities of all ages. We wanted the camp to be free of charge for our participants and their families, with no restrictions on age or ability level; something that didn’t exist in our community at the time. The camp ran from 2009 to 2013 each summer and was a huge success! We hosted 24 campers and over 25 volunteers. We recruited all of our friends to volunteer as counselors. The camp operated on volunteers and donations each year, with no cost to the families. Over the years, our passion for this community never wavered. Lauren went on to get her undergraduate and graduate degrees in Special Education related fields, Melissa received her undergraduate in the Psychology and Sociology related field, and we both continued to support the disability community around Memphis in various ways. In 2015, we were connected with a teacher couple from Kibera, Kenya due to our involvement with the disability community in Memphis and helping get many programs started in the area. Kibera is one of the largest slums in Africa and has very minimal supports and awareness for people with disabilities. These teachers wanted assistance with their inclusive school, one of the only schools in the area to educate students with special needs, and they invited us to visit Kenya. In July 2016, the two of us headed off to Kenya on our own and completed our first of many successful trips! Out of this initial visit, Exceptional Connections International (ECI) was born. ECI recruits professional volunteers to travel abroad each year to provide special education-based training to parents, teachers, and related professionals in our Partner ‘s communities. Additionally, we focus on raising community awareness for people with disabilities, as each of our Partners are in areas where there is a strong stigma. In 2015, ECI started with one Partner organization in Kenya and have now grown to three Partner organizations in Kenya, one in Haiti, one in Rwanda, and one in the USA. We travel twice a year with a team of professionals to Africa and carryout monthly Zoom trainings and follow-ups when we aren’t in-country.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
I feel like our biggest challenge can be getting “buy-in” from people in the United States to care and see that there is a need in developing communities around the world for people with disabilities and their families. It seems if they don’t have a direct connection or relationship with someone with a disability, they don’t quite see the problem our Partner communities are facing. In the US, people with disabilities have rights, laws that protect them, and the opportunity to go to school. That’s not the case in the communities we work with. It is hard to find schools in these communities who will even accept students with special needs. Our Partners’ schools receive students who have never been given the opportunity to attend school before because of their disability. Teachers and parents don’t have access to training and resources to provide quality supports either. Which is why ECI provides the services we do, free of charge to our Partners and the families they serve. Raising adequate funds each year can also be a challenge. We have some really strong annual fundraisers, but getting support and donations outside of those events is more difficult. We also have wonderful volunteers who dedicate their time to travel with us each year and who help us lead online trainings with our Partners each month, but we are always in need of more professionals who believe in our mission and want to contribute their time and skills to us and our Partners!
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Melissa is an animal manager at the Memphis Zoo. She is the Associate Curator over the China and primates department. Earlier this year, she also completed her certification as a Certified Non-Profit Professional (CNP), so that she can continue to support ECI in multiple capacities. In addition to her many years of volunteer work with the disability community around Memphis, she also works part time as a personal assistant to a young adult with Autism. Lauren is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst, specializing in Autism and behavioral disorders. She owns and operates her own small business that provides in-home supports and school consulting. Exceptional Connections International (ECI) started out as our “side hobby”, but it is very quickly growing into more than a part-time job for us both! We enjoy collaborating together to run ECI and all of our work with the non-profit is voluntary. If we aren’t working our “real” jobs, you will most certainly find us doing something for the organization!
We love that we get to work together to continue to grow ECI! It’s unique that a set of twins gets to spend so much of their professional life together. We are so proud to see how far our Partners and their communities have come since 2016. More schools for students with disabilities continue to open up and community awareness continues to grow. We have the privilege of hearing firsthand from families the difference our organization has made in their lives. It’s an honor to be able to witness these personal stories while abroad. Though the work can be tiring, it is truly rewarding. One thing that really sets us apart from others is our effort to remain sustainable. We actually don’t provide our Partners with any financial aid. We only supply education and training, two things that won’t run out or can’t be taken away! And something that our Partners can continue to share within their own communities, so that the knowledge continues to spread as far as possible! When COVID hit, we of course had to postpone all travel for over 2 years. But out of that came our Zoom trainings, which we conduct monthly for all of our Partners. We’re dedicated to providing continuous access to education and supports when we can’t be in-country with our Partners. We also find it extremely meaningful and sustainable that we have long-term relationships with our Partners. We get to visit the same communities year after year and see the progress they continue to make.
What were you like growing up?
Lauren was the shy one and Melissa was more outspoken. And this still holds true today! We’ve both always shared similar interests, had the same group of friends, and have a love for animals. However, our most obvious shared interest is our love for people with disabilities and their families. Working with these families became pretty much our whole lives at age 15 and that still holds true today.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.exceptionalconnectionsinternational.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/exceptional_connections_intl/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Exceptional2018/
- Other: https://www.facebook.com/EmpowerTheExceptionalwithECI/
