J’yuanna ‘jae’ Allen and Kierra Macklin provide education to underrepresented students in the special needs community as the co-founders of the Peace by Piece Foundation.
Allen, a recent Florida A&M University graduate who earned her degree in psychology, and Macklin, a psychology major attending FAMU, founded PPF on July 14, 2023.
After working closely with special needs children, Allen and Macklin noticed minority families struggled to find resources that helped children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.
“Both Jae and I are registered behavior technicians. Last summer was our first summer working as interns at an applied behavior analysis clinic. We worked in one-on-one therapy sessions with children with autism. I feel like being in that field showed us it’s not a lot of people that look like us and not a lot of people servicing Black and Brown people in ABA,” Macklin said.
PFP offers fun educational activities to schools with a high volume of students with ASD and informational sessions on becoming a registered behavior technician. The foundation also provides a $500 scholarship to high school seniors and college students with ASD.
Allen and Macklin created the scholarship to aid the families of children with ASD in their transition to college.
“A lot of parents would tell me they didn’t understand autism or didn’t know until it was too late,” Allen said.
Organizations like PFP are increasingly important as government-sanctioned programs for special needs students are on the verge of being dismantled. President-elect Donald Trump plans to abolish the Department of Education. According to CBS News, Trump wants to dissolve the DOE because he thinks its budget is too large.
“One thing I’ll be doing very early in the administration is closing up the Department of Education in Washington, D.C., and sending all education and education work it needs back to the states,” Trump said at more than one rally.
One of the responsibilities of the DOE is to ensure that schools provide resources to students with special needs. Without this agency, state discretion will decide how much funding special needs programs are awarded. Labrittney Orick, a licensed social worker with experience teaching autistic children, worries that without government oversight, special needs students will suffer.
“It’s going to hurt them tremendously. There are services the DOE is required to offer and most of those children are on individualized education plans, so their education is catered towards their needs and what skills they lack. They need that IEP to get the resources from the government, like financial funds for physical therapy and speech pathologists,” Orick said. Without the DOE, low-income families with special needs children cannot afford the resources they need.
“We will see a major change in the special education department that already struggles as is without Trump’s input, so I’m really hoping his plans fall through, and I don’t see a massive decrease in students that receive special needs services because there is an influx of students who need it and don’t get it,” Allen said.
PPF brings awareness to how ASD affects minority communities and ensures that students with ASD have accommodations that help them learn. “The special education programs are already severely underfunded, not getting the attention and the resources that they need. To be honest, I’m afraid I’m really afraid of how this would affect the kids,” said Macklin.
Despite federal underfunding of special needs programs, Allen and Macklin will continue to lead by example. “We are creating an inclusive environment for them because autism doesn’t mean that you can’t do certain things. It just means you do things differently,” Macklin said.