Brooke Rea, a speech-language pathologist, hosted a walk in Guelph to raise money and awareness for Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS) about a month ago.
CAS is a rare motor speech disorder in which children have trouble producing sounds, syllables and words.
Children know the words, but their brains fail to send accurate messages to the lips, tongue and jaw and there isn’t a cure. It is managed through therapy that trains the mouth, tongue and jaw to speak.
The funds raised went towards Childhood Apraxia of Speech Association of North America, the only national nonprofit exclusively dedicated to children with apraxia and their families.
This year there was a total of 81 walks with only two in Canada, Guelph and Vancouver. At the Guelph location, there was a total of 150 participants (including 19 Apraxia Superstars) and over $12,000 USD raised. Team Brianna was the top fundraising team and Kristin Slade was the top fundraising individual.
