GiGiFIT Acceptance Challenge Team Spotlight

Wow, teams!!  You have all stepped up!  We are so impressed with the impact you have already made with your teams and sharing your reasons why GiGi’s Playhouse is important to you! We have two teams to spotlight this week, check out their stories:

Last week we had a superstar team bring in the most participants and that was Team Extra Esther! Let’s learn more about this amazing girl and why her family is moving for acceptance! Team Extra Esther was created in honor of Esther Fox. She inspires the whole Fox family to live life to the fullest with a joyful heart! Esther gives her Best of All by showing up every day with a smile, a big heart, and a determined spirit! The Foxes LOVE all the programs at GiGi’s Playhouse, but their favorite is the pet therapy program! Esther loves dogs and she has the best time playing and snuggling with the dogs that come to visit! Mom, Andi, is a board member at GiGi’s Atlanta but her favorite way to volunteer at the playhouse is to help coordinate the pet therapy program. She and Esther both love when the dogs come to visit.  The Fox Family is all about spreading the mission of GiGi’s Playhouse. “Our family believes it’s very important to show and teach acceptance. We speak to everyone we meet and make sure they feel there is a place for them.”  Having a GiGi’s Playhouse in Atlanta has made a huge difference to Esther. “Community at GiGi’s is everything for our family!  It is a place for Esther to develop relationships with her peers, grow through therapeutic programs, feel accepted exactly the way she is, and to have so much fun. For our family, GiGi’s is a place where we have found friendship, support, advice, and love.  We are so thankful for all the many ways GiGi’s Playhouse serves our family.”

Our highest fundraising team not only raised the most money for GFAC this past week but took over the lead of all teams! This is not a shock as the Neff Family is always the team to beat! Can anyone give them some competition??

Team Theo Neff is moving in honor of its namesake, Theo, but also everyone who is a part of our community. They honor and thank all the wonderful families that keep coming to GiGi’s Playhouse, all the people that believe in them and continue to help them grow and give! Mom, Jill, encourages her children to give their Best of All by teaching Theo and Farrah to be helpers and to be kind and polite to others, and to do something nice for someone each day. Jill loves to watch our young adult program evolving. The Neffs love the Saturday programs and believe that therapies are the heart of our playhouse!  Jill once taught music classes on Saturdays, help set up for parties, ran the math and literacy program, served on the board for over six years! She now serves as an Emeritus board member. “GiGi’s Achievement Center is just apart of me and always will be!”  Jill focuses on teaching acceptance daily, “That’s a really essential thing to me and something I have always organically cultivated in my classroom. You get them at a young age like my students and you show them that no matter who someone is or how different they may look or act- they are still a person just like you and me and they deserve love, inclusion, and friendship. It’s so much easier to include than to exclude!” It means everything to the Neff family to have GiGi’s Playhouse nearby.  “It means our community has a great resource and an outlet for getting other people educated and involved in the community.”

Have you created your team yet??  Get started here

Let’s all #moveforacceptance