Here’s a great outdoor Maine program for disabled kids and adults

The Adaptive Outdoor Education Center is an amazing program that provides outdoor recreation and education opportunities for people with disabilities. Headquartered in the Carrabasset Valley, this wonderful association offers opportunities all over Maine.

These people are truly an inspiration, and you need only to see the big smiles on the faces of disabled kids and adults enjoying a program to know how important this is. This story about the founders, Annemarie and Bruce Albison, is also inspiring.

2005 Annemarie’s father had a massive stroke, and like so many people, it changed his entire world in an instant. An educator for over 40 years, communicating with young adults was his passion. Aphasia, a communication disorder, left him struggling to carry on a conversation, read and write.

Annemarie and her husband Bruce set out to learn as much about Aphasia as possible and to make a positive difference for people struggling with this little understood condition. They founded the Aphasia Center of Maine and held their first Andre R. Hemond Aphasia Retreat Weekend in July of 2012: retreats continue to be held annually.

Inspired by the positive changes one weekend could make in the lives of their participants, the Albistons searched for a way to reach more people with a wide variety of challenges in more extended time frames. Their vision, now a reality, is the Adaptive Outdoor Education Center in Carrabassett Valley, Maine.

Check out the website of this great program, which also offers opportunities for volunteers.

www.adaptiveoutdooreducationcenter.org

George Smith

About George Smith

George stepped down at the end of 2010 after 18 years as the executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine to write full time. He writes a weekly editorial page column in the Kennebec Journal and Waterville Morning Sentinel, a weekly travel column in those same newspapers (with his wife Linda), monthly columns in The Maine Sportsman magazine, two outdoor news blogs (one on his website, georgesmithmaine.com, and one on the website of the Bangor Daily News), and special columns for many publications and newsletters. Islandport Press published a book of George's favorite columns, "A Life Lived Outdoors" in 2014. In 2014, George also won a Maine Press Association award for writing the state's bet sports blog. In 2016, Down East Books published George's book, Maine Sporting Camps, and Islandport Press published George and his wife Linda's travel book, Take It From ME, about their favorite Maine inns and restaurants.