ERIN – Chricket Yule has been awarded the Sovereign’s Medal for Volunteers for doing what she loves: building connections with individuals with special needs.
Surrounded by friends and family, Yule was presented the medal by Elizabeth Dowdeswell, Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, on Feb. 28.
The medal honours volunteers who have made a significant and continual contribution to their community.
“It’s an absolute honour,” Yule said of receiving the award.
During the ceremony Yule’s husband, Mac, played the bagpipes and her two neighbours, both members of the RCMP, donned their full uniforms to commemorate the event.
“I just couldn’t believe [it],” Yule said of the ceremony.
“I knew my husband might consider playing the bagpipes, but … there were a lot of surprises that I wasn’t aware of happening.”
Yule said she’s been recognized in the community before, but this celebration was particularly special.
The longtime Erin resident has played a role as a volunteer in many areas of the community, but her largest contribution has been to the Special Friends Club, a circle of friends that promotes personal growth and social activities.
Yule, with her husband Mac and three children, moved from Toronto to the Town of Erin in 1979 where she raised her family.
In 1995, she created the Special Friends Club, which began as a recreational program for individuals with special needs.
The program was geared towards supporting young adults with developmental delays with the goal of creating a friendship circle for them, she explained.
When it first began, the Special Friends Club would meet on Saturdays from 10am to 4pm at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Hillsburgh.
“After just one year, it became evident that it was just meeting so many needs on different levels,” Yule said.
From there, the club began offering a seven-week day camp in July and August.
After 24 years of service, Yule retired as coordinator for the program two years ago.
She now spends her spare time on her country property, enjoying visits with her four grandchildren.
Although it’s been tricky to navigate the program with the pandemic, Yule said the club has been able to keep going.
“The church has opened and closed a few times, but they see it as a program that really is needed as a social service for both those special friends and their families,” she said.
The program, now in its 27th year, has been a big part of Yule and her family’s life.
“I fell in love with these families and their needs, their special needs children and adult children,” she said.
“I can’t believe it was 24 years … The time just flew by because it’s like a family.”
The program hasn’t had a lot of turnover, Yule explained, with many of the special friends having been involved in the program as teens and now into their adult life.
“So it was an absolute honour,” she said. “But it was also 24 years of pure pleasure for me.”
Each of her children have also worked or been involved with the program at one point in time.
“It’s so easy to train someone, but what they have to have is compassion and empathy,” she explained.
“And we would see that in an interview situation; no matter what walk of life you were coming from, the compassion piece and empathy for these guys, it’s just quite something.”
There were activities they would do in the program, Yule explained, that a regular teen or young adult may take for granted.
She said the very first time she planned a pyjama party day, one of the parents called her after to tell her it was her son’s best day ever at the program.
When Yule asked why, the parents said her son had never hung out in his pyjamas or sat with a circle of friends eating popcorn and watching a movie.
“She said he’s never had that experience in his life,” Yule explained.
“That kind of tells what the program was about – we were trying to offer the special friends real-life situations.”
Yule said while some of the special friends weren’t always able to verbalize that they had a great day, it was the families that saw the thrill.
“That’s probably what was the biggest thing about the program, is that every time they were together, the special friends, they were just so excited to be together – they were a family,” she said.
