Friends of Forrest

10/24/2025

Packing up some pretty awesome swag for our autistic friends ’s YES DAY walk for autism this Sunday at Tempe Beach Park! We are proud to sponsor an event that allows us to meet both parts of our mission: to provide genuine friendship to neurodivergent people and to financially support their causes! We hope to see you at the tent where we will have a bubble party, the life sized peg board you’ve all loved the last two years, and lots of awesome giveaways!

10/21/2025

Who's ready for YES DAY, this SUNDAY??? We are!!!

08/24/2025

Join us for the Best Day YES DAY walk for Autism on 10/26 at Tempe Beach Park. See the link below to join our team, help fundraise, or follow along below!

For Now, I AM LOOKING FOR A SPECIAL TYPE OF VENDORS!

I am an event co-chair again this year and as fellow autism mom, I've made it my personal challenge to recruit as many activities and delights in one place for autistic people and their family to partake in...those activities maybe we don't have the access to whether it bc of lack of access, accommodations, funds, or general lack of the spirit of inclusivity.

There's a pumpkin patch, carnival, tennis, arts and crafts, science experiments, etc. I want this year to be bigger and better...so, if you have a business or connection to any athletic, arts, science, amusement, or otherwise extracuricular fun and want to join for an awesome day of inclusion, please reach out!! If you have another type of business or food truck or autism related products, resources, or services, also reach out! I'd love to get every and anyone involved. Thanks!

Join our team here:

Around the time Southwest Autism Research and Resource Center (SARRC) was founded, the incidence of an autism diagnosis was 1 in 500; today it is 1 in 31.

08/14/2025

Join us again for Southwest Autism Research & Resource Center (SARRC) YES DAY WALK FOR AUTISM on Sunday, October 26th at Tempe Beach Park! We'd love to have you join us for the walk, resource fairs, and dozens of neurodivergent-friendly activities!! Join our team or donate here:

Contact UsE [email protected] 602.340.8717 W www.autismcenter.org View Southwest Autism Research & Resource Center’s Donor Privacy Policy

04/02/2025

Today is and it feels like the perfect time to kick off our button campaign. When we created Friends of Forrest, we knew our goals were going to be 1. Friendships for neurodivergent people, which means educating the world around them, and 2. Financially contributing to the causes that are meaningful to them. When we decided to create this “friend” button, I daydreamed about having a symbol as identifiable and unifying as the Human Rights Campaign 🟰 sign but for neurodivergence. Autistic and otherwise neurodivergent people need safe spaces and allies, so the wearing of this button conveys, “I see you.”

If you haven’t already, we hope you will head to our website (link in bio) and sign our pledge of friendship (it’s free!) for adults or children. And then, we hope you’ll wear your button with pride and share it with others online (tag us please) and in person so the next person can scan the QR code on the back and also become a friend. For the entire month of April, we will donate $1 for every single new friendship pledge to the Autism Research Institute. In their own words, ARI works to advance the health of autistic people through biomedical research and free education. In a time of complex discussions around autism research, ARI remains committed to transparency, collaboration, and investigations that make a real difference. Science must serve the community it studies, and we continue to work to ensure that it does.

We are so grateful for your friendship and help spreading our movement to drive neurodivergent lives forward > Together

12/31/2024

As we look back on 2025, the thing we will cherish most is your FRIENDSHIP!!

Considering a little, last minute charitable giving before the ball drops? Please visit www.friendsofforrest.org! We have set some huge goals for enormous projects for 2025 and hope to reveal them early in the new year!!

Stay in touch in 2025 as we make more and more and continue to clear neurodivergent pathways forward!

🥂Cheers!🥂

12/03/2024

🎁Join us this for our second annual Adopt-a-Friend of Forrest Holiday Event🎁

Last December, our foundation and Forrest Logistics adopted 28 students from Alhambra Elementary School District’s severely disabled and medically fragile classrooms, providing clothing, shoes, coats, and toys to each child. We also fulfilled wish list items for each of their their incredible teachers and their speech, OT, and physical therapy teams. The gratitude and joy we witnessed were profound, and we aim to make a similar impact this season.

For 2024, we are supporting three self-contained autism classrooms in the Cartwright School District, also located in Maryvale, AZ, an area of the valley facing significant economic challenges. We can’t wait to meet our new friends at Cartwright Elementary School.

Socioeconomic status plays a crucial role in determining the support available to individuals with autism, significantly impacting their developmental outcomes. Raising a child with autism requires additional financial resources, averaging $17,000 more annually than for neurotypical children according to JAMA Network’s 2014 studies. Lower-income families struggle with these expenses, compounded by limited access to public services and insurance. The daily demands of therapies and advocacy can lead to caregiver burnout and emotional stress, especially without adequate support networks. Addressing these disparities through policy changes and increased access to resources is an essential part of our foundation’s mission.

This holiday season, families of children with autism and other disabilities are facing financial strain and emotional stress that make it difficult to provide a holiday season for their children. These students and their unique needs are frequently overlooked in traditional holiday gift programs and we want to do something about that!

Every Friend of Forrest deserves a joyful holiday. Our goal is to ensure these students and their families feel seen, valued, and supported. By coming together as a community, we can bring comfort and joy to their lives this holiday season. You can help support our efforts by making a donation on our website www.friendsofforrest.org this holiday season!

Thank you for helping us make a meaningful difference in the lives of these deserving children, their educators, and their families.

11/22/2024

Thank you for the fan girl opportunity to meet in real life! I am an enormous enjoyer of her content which explains the many nuances of the autistic experience from the perspective of an autistic person who happens to work clinically with autistic people. Kaelynn really understands the privilege that her exceptional communications skills are and she has the ability to thread the needle in explaining the experiences of those who do not have the same capabilities in a way that is accessible to everyone. I admire that she uses her voice to not just be a self-advocate, she’s an advocate who uses her platform to represent the vast autistic experience and needs for support in the autistic community. These things combined with transparency of her own personal limitations and system of supports make her the perfect voice for those of us who want to learn from actually autistic voices. I just bought several copies of her book, “Life on the Bridge” to read and share with others and highly recommend that you do too! It is an inspiration to follow you …you are the ultimate friend of Forrest!

10/25/2024

Here are just a few of the 10,000 buttons we have prepped with the help of our newest as we start our new it campaign! The QR codes take new friends on our website to sign a pledge of neurodiverse friendship. We are so excited to launch a new and improved website this weekend for ’s YES Day Walk for Autism! For each new friendship pledge signed online this weekend, we will give an additional dollar to SARRC! Special thanks to friends at NJHS, and from for saying and helping to clear the path ahead for the neurodivergent friends in their lives!

10/17/2024

Local teens who need volunteer hours, we are a nonprofit foundation who can sign off on some hours! We have several projects to complete assembly line style in the evening next Wednesday and we need a few volunteers to join us at YES day for autism on the morning of 10/27. Here’s the link to volunteer and all the info!!!