BARRY WILLIAMS/Special

Nikki Wilson, founder of Dream Makers Youth Foundation, helps third-grader Shekinah Edmond, 8, with her handwriting skills at East Lake Elementary School.

To fulfill an assignment in graduate school at New York University, Nikki Wilson designed a development program for a therapeutic center that would integrate sports and other activities into occupational therapy. Later, as a contract therapist with the Fulton County school system, Wilson brought that plan to life.

"In interacting with students at school, I saw that they needed extra assistance with their schoolwork and that they had very few recreational and social opportunities," said Wilson, MA, OTRL. "I wanted to be involved with these kids' lives as more than just a therapist."

In 2004, Wilson founded Dream Makers Youth Foundation, a nonprofit organization with a mission to provide community-based educational, recreational and therapeutic services to preschool- through high school-aged children with special needs in Atlanta.

The foundation also runs a tutoring program for children who have mild-to-moderate-intellectual delays.

"We help them with subjects they are studying in school, as well as teach them good study [habits] and effective time-management skills," Wilson said. "Showing them how to take good notes and make an outline of what they need to learn helps improve their grades and their standardized test scores."

The foundation also launched an adaptive sports program, with Wilson coaching the Cougars: indoor wheelchair soccer and basketball teams. The teams, which draw players from elementary school to high school in Cobb County, play through the American Association of Adapted Sports Programs. In 2004, the Cobb Cougars were indoor wheelchair state champions in soccer.

An athlete in high school, Wilson knew the benefits of playing sports, and she wanted special-needs children to have the same opportunities.

"Playing a sport improves their health. Even kids in power chairs get a workout, which helps increase mobility," she said. "But it also lifts their spirits to interact with other students who understand the challenges they face."

Participation in sports improves her students' social lives and puts them in the spotlight for a change.

"When we went to the state championships, one of our team members had a sister without disabilities who she had cheered on in sports. Now it was her turn to play and have her sister on the bench pulling for her," Wilson said. "Her parents told me it made the whole family feel good."

To pay for the team's transportation, equipment, registration fees and jerseys, Dream Makers relies on grants and fund-raisers. Its main event is the annual Celebrity Wheelchair Basketball Jam, which pits the Cougars against celebrities playing in wheelchairs.

"Stars like Josh Childress of the Atlanta Hawks, Jumpin' Jackie Jackson (of the Harlem Globetrotters) and Mark Selbee (world champion kickboxer) are so good with the kids, and they help raise awareness in the community," Wilson said. "One of our goals is to make people more comfortable around children with disabilities.

"Our students will talk about playing with them for weeks afterward. Competing makes them feel a part of something, and they want to win. That carries over in their desire to do their best in other areas of their lives."

With working as a school therapist during the day, serving as a home-based therapist at night, holding team practices, tutoring, coaching soccer and basketball games, meeting with the organization's board and promoting the foundation, Wilson stays busy.

"I knew that it would take time to get the foundation off the ground. It's still small but growing," she said.

She's hoping to persuade the Cobb County school system to sponsor the teams to defray some of the cost, help expand the basketball team and offer the services to more children.

"I think about the excitement in the kids that I work with. Just the look on their faces makes it worth it," Wilson said. "Working with the foundation is the favorite thing I'm doing right now. I love it."

ON THE WEB

For more information, go to www.dreammakersyouthfoundation.org.