Our Mission

Our mission is to provide an accepting environment for members of the Autism Community where they can cultivate friendships and social skills, and connect to the greater community.

Our Vision

The Autism Aspergers Friendship Society's ("AAFS") vision is a world in which there are no barriers to acceptance; a world where everyone is afforded a socially and recreationally fulfilling life.

Our values are what will ensure this vision succeeds and show how we make this happen in our daily work.

Our Values

Our values are what will ensure this vision succeeds and show how we make this happen in our daily work.

• Community Everyone deserves community in every sense of the word. We create community, we build community and we are community.
• Acceptance: We recognize that acceptance needs to start with the self and we teach acceptance in all that we do. We want our members to be accepted in their communities and to come to a place of acceptance for themselves.
• Relationships: A genuine relationship is a lasting relationship. This approach not only affects our members, but also keeps our staff and volunteers engaged in AAFS while they are with us and long after they move on. Our relationship-based approach makes us more than an organization, it makes us a family.
• Adventure and Risk: Adventure is an integral part of life and often life’s most important lessons involve an element of risk. We provide a safe environment for our members to calculate risk and seek adventure.
• Resiliency: Resiliency is proven to be linked to long-term success in almost every walk of life. We provide opportunities for our members to build resiliency. We do this by creating an environment in which they learn how to solve problems and bounce back from tough situations.
• Play– Play is essential to development because it contributes to the cognitive, physical, social, and emotional well-being of children, youth and adults. WE LOVE and LIVE TO PLAY!
• Experience– We believe everyone has the right to experience the world in their own way and we don’t hold our expectations of ‘how’ certain environments should be experienced. Every member is encouraged to explore every environment and as many environments as possible.

We believe it is incredibly important for youth with ASD to be provided a welcoming space to learn social thinking and take social risks. Interpersonal, relationship, and communication skills are a priority for all people no matter where they began in life. It is paramount that our children are given the opportunity to practice and develop these skills in a safe environment. It is vital to connect our youth with other members of their community to not only share experiences but strengthen them as individuals and as a population. Our youth have so much to share with the disability community, and world at large, if we will simply take the time to listen.

Our How

AAFS provides respite care in a recreational environment for children, youth, and adults on the Autism Spectrum; including but not limited to Autism, Aspergers, Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD), and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). AAFS is constructed and implemented by the youth; we envision and facilitate programming where youth can choose their own activities, and every intricate detail of each activity regardless of how difficult it is to conceptualize or organize.