 Can I stay out of tune? Would you stand and walk out on me? Let me hear yours and I'll sing you a song then I'll try my staying out of key Oh, I get high with a hope from my friends I get high with a hope from my friends I get high with a hope from my friends We have a range of disabilities among our participants and we basically feel that if you identify with this program then the program is for you I've been involved for a long time mostly because I have a son with disabilities and he has participated in Special Olympics and then Team Davis for as long as we've moved here We established our non-profit in 2006 although prior to that we'd been existing as our local Special Olympics team In 2006 we decided we wanted to do more than just the sports We wanted to do some other things as well and so we formed the Team Davis Local Support Fund in order to be able to facilitate our doing a lot of other activities like art and singing and nutrition class and dances Our mission is to create opportunities for social and recreational and athletic opportunities Kind of at the core of our existence is to also provide opportunities for our participants to more fully integrate into the Davis community I'm Ella Cohen. I lead the Team Davis Singers with Josh Jordan I have been a disability rights lawyer my whole career and so I'm very interested in working with people with disabilities and when I moved to Davis a couple of years ago I got to know Robin and I asked if there was any opportunity for volunteering with Team Davis and I'm also interested in music and so there was this opportunity to help Josh with the singing class so I grabbed it I first became involved with Team Davis because I have a child who is an adult living with autism When he was a teenager he became involved with Team Davis The Coral Group existed as a karaoke style singing group and I was asked to take over in 2013 by Robin Dewey and I turned it into more of a live music type of thing The singing group helps get people out into the community and the community also has been very receptive to the singers Parents of participants have been very very supportive and giving positive feedback, explaining several times how much it means to them and to the rest of their family to have their participants or their children participate in this Every time the singers perform the individuals involved are very anxious and nervous about the performance and that's a learning exercise each and every time so they express their anxiety, they get each other all riled up and then they comfort each other and they help each other and after the fact they get so excited about how much fun it was and it's just wonderful to see how much they help each other and how much self-confidence they gain from the experience and how much fun they have Ladies and gentlemen, please make welcome the Team Davis singers What do you enjoy about singing? Just like singing a lot, it just makes me calm and I like What do you enjoy about singing, Brian? I love the different songs that we sing I play a guitar You play a guitar? Yeah How come you're not bringing it to the group? I don't know If you could tell me a little bit about why you enjoy singing with Davis's group here It's just so much fun and I feel like I'm included and it's fun to sing in us Other choirs do at school and lots of it's just fun Okay, cool And do you enjoy singing with the other people in the group? Yes, it's really fun And what do you like about Team Davis, the singing group that you're in? They help us out a lot Okay, can you name a way they help you out? They help us with our jobs and different things like that in life I think the most glaring need right now for people with disabilities is employment I think if there are business owners or the city or the campus Can offer opportunities for people with disabilities to do meaningful work It goes a long way, it's something that all of us want in our lives And it's really really important to being a successful adult Is having some meaningful employment that you can do and feel good about One of the greatest needs of this population is for social interactions Both with each other and with members of the general community And Team Davis does a great job with both One of the things that Team Davis tries to do is provide leadership opportunities For our participants or opportunities to be out in public It provides opportunities for recreational and social opportunities For these individuals who have disabilities that's geared toward them Which is great and that it also brings them out into the community For example the dances at the graduate, it's very integrated There are people with and without disabilities there And it's a lot of fun and I've noticed how well the Team Davis singers Interact not only with each other but with the rest of the community Being a Team Davis volunteer, I get a lot out of this experience I really do, I love the singers and I love working with them And they've given me at least as much as I've given to them It's been very rewarding for me It's given me an opportunity to develop as an educator Which is my profession Giving me a somewhat different perspective than my job And how people learn So it's been very rewarding for me To me one of the best things about Team Davis is that we have such great volunteers And these are folks that have been volunteering for years Team Davis is very rare in my opinion in the sense that it not only provides Opportunities for people with disabilities to engage in social and recreational and sports activities But it also brings people with and without disabilities together in the community In a way that I think is really unusual and really great Our website address is www.team-davis.org And there's information about how to donate to Team Davis on the website as well And how to contact us If you email us or there's a telephone number, we'll get that We'll give you a call back or email Yay!