NeuroGuidance Fremont hosts their Easter event to bring awareness to neurodiversity

By Staff Writers Varun Madhavan and Aarav Vashisht

NeuroGuidance Fremont (NeuroGuidance), a recently established student-led nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting neurodivergent individuals, hosted their community-centered, festive Easter event at 12 – 3 p.m. on April 20 at Lake Elizabeth Community Park. The event offered several engaging artistic activities, such as Easter egg making, card crafting, and poster sticker decorating, captivating younger attendees while also highlighting the importance of awareness for neurodivergent individuals  by relating the activities to the overall Bay Area community.

Primarily run by MSJ students, NeuroGuidance Fremont is the Fremont branch of the larger NeuroGuidance nonprofit organization, which operates in schools across CA, including Granada High School and James Logan High School. The organization aims to promote awareness about neurominorities to the public, provide internships and service-learning opportunities for neurodivergent high school students, and advocate for equitable treatment of neurodivergent individuals to empower them to succeed. “[Neurodivergent students] experience a lot more challenges than we [as the neurotypical] do, and we just want to provide more opportunities for them to further their career, and also … succeed in the future,” NeuroGuidance Fremont Vice President Sophomore Ashley Kang said. 

Upon entrance to the Easter event, attendees were greeted with two meticulously organized tables, each featuring a vibrant array of prismatic paints, egg-shaped cardboard cutouts, and wooden brushes scattered throughout. The tables were placed between the rocky, saber-toothed play structures and the narrow park trails, offering a tranquil and idyllic view of the lakeside. As families meandered across the park, enjoying the scenic views, NeuroGuidance officers dispersed throughout the park, encouraging visitors to partake in the various guided activities they had set up.

The most prominent attraction for participants was the opportunity to paint wooden eggs, as attendees had the opportunity to express their creativity and artistic capabilities. Each egg had started with a premade, carved design, but by the end, through paint, it was imbued with more of its own intricate, ornate designs, ranging from stripes to polka dots. Once completed, attendees were allowed to either keep the egg they had painted or leave it behind, in which case the eggs would be gifted to a neurodivergent youth to enjoy. As children designed their eggs, attendees were also invited to decorate a poster with stickers and sketches. By the end of the event, the poster was adorned with several distinctive images created by attendees of all ages and artistic abilities. This event highlighted the bond that NeuroGuidance had quickly formed with the community, as their creations could be gifted to the neurodivergent youth.

As it was their first event, the officers used the time to enroll visitors onto their mailing list. This effort brought further awareness to their initiatives. The event was successful not only in turnout, but also in establishing and sharing the organization’s community-oriented approaches of events and workshops to bring recognition to neurodiversity. “I think it’s important [for everyone] to learn as much as you can [about neurodivergency], even if it’s not something that … directly affects you,” NeuroGuidance Fremont President Sophomore Anika Srinivasan said.