AHRC Nassau 75th Anniversary Video

Highlighting 75 years of providing high-quality services to people with disabilities

Client: AHRC
Industry: Nonprofit
Video Type: Brand Awareness
Messaging Type: Interview-Style

About This Video Project

Our repeat client AHRC hired us to make a series of videos to show at their gala. One of the videos we produced was a 75th anniversary video highlighting the history of AHRC Nassau, an organization dedicated to providing high-quality supports and services to individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their families as well as mentioning the AHRC Foundation’s 30 years of service.

This interview style brand awareness video features multiple testimonials with past and present members of the organization as well as the family members that have been helped by their services.

Learn more about the organization’s decades-long work through our combination of multiple interviews using client submitted photos for visuals and matching it with emotionally moving music and motion graphics.

Transcription

AHRC is a 75-year-old organization that is committed to providing high-quality supports and services to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their families. It started with families who had a child with a development disability. It was a time when parents had very few options. Most doctors and professional people would tell them that they should seriously consider placing their son or daughter in a state institution. And so they started out with a dream for their children and for their family, and they joined with other families to try to make those dreams come true. Once this group of individual parents got together and found a way with Helen Kaplan at the lead, that’s how HRC became what HRC is today. Helen became a voice for thousands of parents throughout the state, and she developed grassroots participation by parents and volunteers to bring support to the cause. There were hundreds of people who were members of the auxiliary. They were mainly women. They were just there day in, day out, year in, year out. HRC became to many, and I guess to me as well, like an extended family. It was families. It was individuals. It was mothers getting together with other mothers that knew there was something better for their children. We started out with classes and education, and then we moved forward to work opportunities, a work center, vocational services. From there, we opened one of the first residential group homes in the 70s here on Long Island, and we have continued to grow to become the largest residential provider in the state of New York. In addition to providing day services, support services, recreation, socialization, you name it, and we do it to ensure a better life for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their family. I’m delighted to be a part of a team of people that have been here, many of them for decades, who are responsible for continued growth and development of the organization that started out very small to now being the second largest organization in the state of New York and one of the largest in the country. In recognizing AHRC Nassau’s 75th anniversary, it’s important to recognize the incredible organizations that have grown out from the dedication of its board members and its members. AHRC Nassau Foundation is one of those groups. Thirty years ago, community leaders came together to form the AHRC Nassau Foundation. The foundation is responsible for creating awareness and raising much-needed funds to support the mission of AHRC Nassau, as well as various entities throughout Long Island who provide services and supports. We can always count on the AHRC Foundation to fill the gaps when government funding is not there, when other supports are not available to us. We’d like to also thank the foundation for its legacy of support in ensuring the success of our mission to provide high-quality services to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities on Long Island. AHRC has created a community, but also we’ve had the opportunity to show the world that the people that we serve are just like them, and that makes a world of difference to people who’ve been judged all their lives. There’s still work to be done, you just hope that each generation turns it over a little bit stronger than when they found it, so the work can continue and more dreams for more people can become a reality. If we didn’t have the people that support our agencies, we wouldn’t be where we are today. We need you to be more involved, for not only your child, but everybody else’s. AHRC, I believe, saved my daughter’s life. She learned so much about independence and what she could do, and I don’t know as a parent that there’s any greater compliment I can give to an organization than to say that I can sleep at night and I’m not worried about what’s going to happen to her when I’m gone. When I think about 75 years, we can’t help but be proud of the legacy that has been created. That legacy continues to propel us forward to ensure that people with disabilities have choice, have opportunity, are indeed included, and have lives that are meaningful and fulfilled. So as AHRC Nassau celebrates 75 years, and the Foundation celebrates its 30th year, we are both poised to move forward into the future, understanding that our primary mission is always to serve, in the best way possible, children and adults with developmental disabilities and their families.

To learn more: https://www.ahrc.org