FDOA Founder's Message: Fodder from the Founder
What is “Normal”

David C. Jones

We are living in very challenging times. We all have had to make many changes in how we live, what we do, and how we do it. Major changes in how we live, how we work and how we play. The Florida Disabled Outdoors Association like all organizations and businesses that survive this pandemic crisis will need to adjust. Success will depend on the ability to adapt to new challenges in order to sustain and provide the goods and services that people need and depend on. Our FDOA team has made great accomplishments in making changes in how we do what we do. We have not deviated from our mission to enhance lives through recreation and active leisure. It is even more important now that our lifestyles have been so seriously disrupted. Now, more than ever, people realize the importance of play time. Our physical, mental, and emotional health is being affected by the pandemic. The need and importance has now been unveiled and realized by our health professionals, experts, and researchers as critical for the well-being of people of all ages and abilities.

Like the rest of world, we have turned to a virtual experience for our programs and have enjoyed great success with our efforts with on-line programing. We are learning more and more as we go. We are continuing to grow these programs by working with our partners and developing new partnerships. A large majority of young people are engaged in on-line activity. Even 20% of baby boomers report on-line purchasing. These trends are expected to continue. Providers of goods and services will continue to adjust or simply not survive.

We made a total shift to total virtual last spring with our annual SportsAbility event and also with our Miracle Sports program. Very well received and enjoyed despite losing some of the important benefits of our face to face activities. A good thing that came out of that is that our reach and engagement increased more than tenfold. That means thousands more people saw and heard our very important message about active living. Many more people learned about and felt the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion in recreation opportunities. Another piece of good news is that the interest and participation in outdoor recreation is booming and is expected to lead our way back to some form of normalcy. We know that big events with large gatherings indoors are not in the cards for immediate consideration.

We are going Hybrid. We have shifted again this year with our SportsAbility event. We moved to a new online SA 2021 Expo along with   limited, separate, and safe, in- person outdoor activities component that will be co-hosted with our partners across the entire State. This increases the area served and also extended our time frame to allow for more participation. This “Alliance” with existing and new partners will drastically increase the reach of opportunities for people to participate in close to home venues.

The other big news is in our cutting edge move to a Virtual Reality platform with the introduction of “SportsAbility Park”. This platform is a developing project that will enable us to greatly expand our scope to people around the globe and offer fun, educational and informative content and activities in a hands on VR format.

The only “normal” that I  see is in the consistency of change. It is happening quickly and I am very excited and happy with how our team and our partners have answered the challenge with our new and adapted programs and services.
 Active Leisure for Life!