Franziska Racker Centers Unveils Making Room Campaign Details

Public phase of Capital Campaign announced to 150 people in attendance at launch event held at Celebrations on November 4th

 

Franziska Racker Centers, a private, nonprofit organization that works to create opportunities for individuals with special needs and their families in Cortland, Tioga and Tompkins counties, has announced plans to raise $3.5 million to expand and improve their Wilkins Rd. campus. To date, Racker Centers has raised $2.35 million dollars of this targeted goal with gifts from volunteers, staff, families, corporate, foundation, and individual donors.

 “There are three main goals we will achieve through the campaign,” states Roger Sibley, Executive Director of Franziska Racker Centers. “One is to help our community better understand and include people with disabilities by creating a Learning Center that will offer trainings for staff, families, professionals from other organizations and the community at large. Second we will modernize our aging preschool building on Wilkins Road, updating the heating system and infrastructure which is over 50 years old. Third, we will better organize our program space and the support functions of the agency, helping staff to be more efficient in their work with families in the communities that we serve.”

Racker Centers hopes to be ready with a new and updated facility for the 2012-13 school year. There are approximately 100 children served at the Wilkins Road campus in the 

daycare, special education preschool and the Trumansburg Head-Start program with which the agency partners. Racker Centers employs over 700 staff located at 26 sites in mainly three counties. Many agency staff frequently travel to the Wilkins Road site for ongoing trainings and administrative needs. Each year approximately 165,000 individual services are provided to 2,800 people that Racker Centers serves.

 

Roger Sibley has been with the agency for over 30 years and states, “Making Room is a bit of a play on words. A major goal is to modernize our aging preschool and create more program space. The other meaning of Making Room is part of our historic Mission, creating the Learning Center to help us continue to move forward. We have been working with families and others to make room in our society for people with disabilities and to meet the ever-evolving needs in our community for over 60 years. While we have made great progress, in some important ways, we as a nation are failing people with disabilities and their families. Government, for many reasons, is backing away from its commitment to fund services.Children with mental illness are often excluded and people with developmental disabilities are often isolated. Many factors, including increasing numbers of people with disabilities and the complexity of challenges facing individuals and their families are getting worse. We need to find new ways of doing things. The Learning Center will help us better

organize and share state-of-the art knowledge about how to help people with special needs and promote inclusion. Making Room is about being engaged, it’s about collaborations and it’s about sharing in order to continue to meet the needs of our community.” 

For more information about Racker Centers and the Making Room campaign or to get involved visit www.rackercenters.org or call Perri LoPinto at 607.272.5891 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              607.272.5891      end_of_the_skype_highlighting ext. 234.