The week of Mar. 18 through Mar. 22 was disability awareness week for Bullitt East. Project Unify inspired others to wear colors coordinating with certain disabilities each day of the week. This week was meant to bring awareness to different kinds of disabilities many struggle with and bring realization to respect for these disabilities.

Each day, there was a different color in relation to a disability. Project unify students chose common disabilities they knew the students would be aware of and twisted in the fact the colors they chose for each day are the same colors as each disabilities ribbon. Monday, students wore gray for dyslexia. Tuesday was blue for autism followed by Wednesday when students wore white in support of blindness. Thursday was yellow or blue for down syndrome and Friday was the day to wear red to show support in favor of people with brain aneurysms.

Project unify member, Lauryn Smith, enjoys the way project unify gets students involved around the school. “We wanted to find a fun way that anyone could participate in to raise awareness for common disabilities. We knew people liked dressing up and we knew a lot of people would do it,” said Smith.

On Monday, students showed support for dyslexia, a language-based learning disability. Many students can suffer from this in school where reading and writing can get very difficult for them. Autism refers to a broad range of conditions characterized by challenges with social skills, repetitive behaviors, speech and nonverbal communication. According to the Centers for Disease Control, autism affects an estimated 1 in 59 children in the United States today. Wednesday was white for blindness. Blindness is defined as a loss for vision and with severity cannot be helped with contacts or glasses. Students can sometimes have a high risk of becoming blind depending on their vision levels or genetics. On Thursday, students honored down syndrome, which is a genetic disorder caused by the presence of all or part of a third copy of chromosome 21. Friday, students honored people with brain aneurysms. Brain aneurysms are a weakness in a blood vessel located in the brain that balloons and fills with blood and when busted can cause severe life threatening complications. Each of these diseases can affect anyone and with students showing their support throughout the week helps others.

To end the week, project unify put together an assembly with part of the basketball team where the special needs students played basketball against Fern Creek’s “Best Buddies” program and others cheered alongside. To round the week out, there is a pledge in the cafeteria where students can sign pledging their respect to the disabled students and never use the r-word against them or in a disrespectful way. Many students are taking this opportunity to sign the banner and continue to show support.