Community Living Sarnia-Lambton (CLSL) is celebrating 70 years.
To mark the milestone, CLSL is hosting an open house so community members can see the work they do.
"We want to show the decades of continued service, growth and evolution," said Executive Director Corry Thomas. "We now have the activity center, which is where the open house is occurring; we run a children's respite out of there. We run some adult respite activities, and we run our day program."
CLSL is a non-profit that supports individuals with intellectual disabilities and works to build a more inclusive, welcoming community.
"We have approximately 700 unique individuals that we provide some kind of care, support, and service to across Sarnia-Lambton, and they participate in a whole range of different programs that we offer," said Thomas. "We have folks that are in 24/7 care that are medically fragile. Then we have people who are supported independent living that are in need of some support, but they're pretty much living independently in the community, so it's quite a broad range. We support from infant to death in some cases."
CLSL began as an idea that brought together nearly two dozen parents in 1955 over a common concern about the lack of schooling and opportunities for their children. The first school opened the following year on Russell Street with six children enrolled.
"We have some people who have been in our care for, in some cases, 30-40 years. So they've been with us for a good portion of that journey, and so we're looking at trying to involve them in celebrating really the long-term relationship that we've had with them and their families," he said.
Several events are being held throughout the year to mark the anniversary and recognize the impact CLSL has had over the decades.
"I think achieving 70 years of dedicated service is a big milestone. I think it speaks really to the organization, our staff, our volunteers, our clients, their families, to their resilience, their passion, to really being integrated and living in the community to their full capacity. More broadly, it's not just in regard to folks with developmental disabilities, it's really looking to the organization's commitment to an inclusive society."
The organization invites community members to attend a special 70th Anniversary open house on Tuesday, November 3, at the Community Living Activity Centre at 1091 Wellington Street in Sarnia, from 4:30 p.m. to 7 p.m.
