Wediko would like to thank its generous donors for without them a new gym would not be possible:

Josephine 
The George Harrington Trust
John Cornish, Esq.
Frederick A. Bailey Trust
William Cornish
Elaine Gorbach Levine Foundation
Agnes M. Lindsay Trust
Howard Redgate
Cogswell Benendent Trust
Clipper Ship Foundation
Bob & Pamela Bernstock
Neubauer Family Trust
Maude Anne & Jack Taylor
Jeff Keffer
Edward Mason, M.D.
Jerry Missel, M.D.
Caroline Murray
Dominic D'Giorigo
Pat Grant, Jr.
Rose & Glenn Boynton
Michael G. Jones, Esq.
Sharon Gordetsky, Ph.D.

In 1997, Wediko's Summer Program and School were selected by the American Institutes for Research as one of the nation's twelve exemplary models for educating and treating children with serious emotional disturbances (SED). This selection was based, in part, on Wediko's innovative programming which reflects current developments in the psychological and educational literature. For example, one finding shows the link between self-selected physical activity, brain activation and higher levels of academic achievement. With this and other advances in neuroscience in mind, Wediko has built a gymnasium for its New Hampshire campus. A marvelous seed grant from a long-time benefactor made this extraordinary project possible.

The gymnasium will add new dimensions to Wediko's experiential education and treatment formats and allow children to develop a range of adaptive competencies never before possible. For our children traumatized by abuse who have numbed body awareness, the gymnasium offers the possibility of re-integrating bodily sensation through expressive movement. For our impulsive, excitement-seeking children, the gymnasium not only provides an outlet for energy and tension, but provides a context (a climbing wall) where appropriate risk-taking can be substituted for dangerous thrill-seeking. For children in our atypical population including those who are high functioning yet show selective developmental delays or mild autism (Asperger's Syndrome), the gymnasium will allow for specialized occupational therapy treatments and adaptive physical education interventions. When successful, these treatments will produce new levels of sensory motor and perceptual motor integration.

These approaches will expand Wediko's therapeutic paradigms thereby increasing the power of the therapeutic methodologies already in use. Unequivocal findings from the last ten years of neuroscience research suggest that multiple therapeutic modalities are essential to help offset the huge number of risk factors associated with serious emotional disturbance. It is only by delivering multiple therapies which build compensatory skills and strengthen existing capacities that the negative outcomes associated with this population can be transformed into positive outcomes. Wediko's research data, based on a population of 150 children with SED, definitively supports this position.

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