In its 20th year, STRIDE is taking its biggest adventure yet.

In February, 20 participants and nine STRIDE staffers will make the trip to Walt Disney World in Florida, and the trip has been a long time coming, STRIDE Executive Director Darren Diguette said.

STRIDE had humble beginnings

Diguette has been with the program since its inception.

“I came here in August 2000,” he said. “It was honestly supposed to be a year-long program through the nonprofit Association for Handicapped Citizens (which later became STRIDE). It was a program for adults with disabilities. We had the idea that after a year, we would look to parks and recreation or the YMCA to take over the task of providing these therapeutic recreation and sports opportunities for folks with disabilities.”

However, passing the program on to another agency wasn’t feasible, and two decades later, STRIDE is still around.

The program has grown leaps and bounds from its first event, which was a Halloween dance that had nine attendees in 2000. Eventually, the agency was offered office space at Community Trust Bank and began offering three or four short programming opportunities each week.

STRIDE became involved with the Special Olympics. Participants started a basketball team and did track and field.

The program kept growing thanks in large part to the response from the community, Diguette said.

“It honestly just grew out of community support,” he said. “I think people in this community realized this was a part of the city and the county that wasn’t being represented. It wasn’t being provided in terms of a place for people with disabilities to be active and have a presence in the community.”

People got behind it, Diguette said, and they started having fundraisers and got support from city and county government. They bought a 15-passenger van, which opened doors for more opportunities for the program.

“And our numbers (of participants) just kept increasing,” he said.

STRIDE today

Today, STRIDE is operated out of a 16,000-square-foot former elementary school facility on Maryland Avenue and offers therapeutic recreation services to more than 80 families with participants ranging from age 2 to 60-plus.

A large part of the program’s focus is getting families involved young so they have access to resources and programs from an early age. Then a priority it placed on individuals who are fresh out of high school and are learning to navigate life without the mandated services they had in school, Diguette said. Those participants are usually in their early 20s or 30s and many have remained with the program for its existence.

“We began to ask ourselves, ‘What is there for these individuals who are graduating and facing life without the mandated services they were getting in school?’” he said.

The resources available through STRIDE are wide-ranging and each individual participant gets something different from the program, Diguette said.

Participants might participate in a variety of Special Olympics athletics teams, receive therapeutic services through Medicaid at the facility, attend day training classes that focus on a variety of lifeskills like money management, cooking, cleaning and more; volunteer in the community or attend any variety of events ranging from trips to the movies to shopping excursions or even overnight trips. Some participants do it all.

“The goal in the beginning, that we feel like we’re coming close to fulfilling, was to be a resource for families with children with disabilities,” Diguette said. “While we may not be able to meet all the needs they have, we can be a resource for some of it.”

Diguette said raising a child with disabilities has its roadblocks and can often feel isolating, but STRIDE aims to be there to support families and create a sense of community.

“We try to be a resource of information, but most importantly, we try to connect them with other families,” he said. “A lot of times the struggles we go through are made easier by someone else having gone through it before.”

The trip of a lifetime

Diguette said a trip to Disney has been a dream for the program and its participants for many years.

“When you ask them what they want to do, where they want to go, the number one answer is Disney,” he said. “Number two is Hawaii.”

It’s something STRIDE staff thought would be an amazing experience, but they weren’t in the position to do it.

“Every year we just kept saying, ‘Maybe next year,’” he said.

The trip was put off year after year, until staff decided this year was as good a time as any to make it happen.

“We made the decision this was an experience of a lifetime and we want to do it now,” he said.

Fundraising and planning efforts began 10 months ago, Diguette said, and once again, the community has stepped up to help in a big way.

Support has come from too many people to name, Diguette said, but ranged from things like a Thanksgiving buffet at Hall’s on the River, individual donations, contributions through the annual GoodGiving Challenge, angel food cake sales and more.

The planning process has also involved preparations with the participants. Late last year those who are attending the trip had the opportunity to learn about boarding a flight, being in an airport and flying on an aircraft thanks to a partnership with The Arc of Kentucky.

They have also been creating bucket lists of what rides, attractions and characters they want to experience when they make the trip.

Diguette said although the planning process has been extensive, seeing the joy of the participants has already been rewarding.

“The joy and giddiness they have about this trip is just incredible,” he said. “We’ve allowed them to be involved as much as possible in the planning, because this truly is their vacation of a lifetime.”

Diguette said the group will leave the second week of February and spend nearly a week at Disney, visiting a different part of the park each day.

Efforts continue

Diguette said fundraising efforts for the trip are continuing, but so far, the community has once again stepped up.

“You can read about folks trying to finding the flaws in this community,” he said. “But I would say this is one of the most giving communities I’ve ever known. The way they have embraced this program is amazing.”

Those interested in learning more about STRIDE, the trip to Disney or making a donation can visit strideky.org. There is a “support Disney” link on the site where donations can be made.

“This trip is only possible because over the past 20 years, this community has stepped up for so many different things,” he said. “The community has made this program possible. We’ve been able to take a pie in the sky idea and make it happen.”