ABOUT AMUSE
AMUSE's Founder, Brittany Bas has a set of twins one of which is autistic. Once receiving the diagnosis, she left her full-time career to become a full-time mom to secure the best needs in the best interest of her children. During that time, she started a nonprofit to advocate for Autism by utilizing the tools and skills that she’s obtained from her previous surgical coordinating, customer service, and sales careers. She is an active member of the Huntington Beach community and wishes to educate, advocate and show kindness. She developed her team carefully, with her intent and desire, to unite individuals that share the same vision.
As AMUSE continues to grow, learn, and meet people who have the same goal with regards to special-needs acceptance and awareness, our founder, together with the amazing pioneer team of AMUSE, has continuously helped us bring more awareness and raise acceptance of the special-needs community. Their dedication is what brings more volunteers and contributions to our foundation that consistently brings us success in our movement.
They have different stories, and dedication, but one is the goal of special-needs awareness and acceptance. Within the past two years, we have distributed First Basic Training in awareness. We have partnered with a clinical team, Dr. Melaura Erickson-Tomaino, Ph.D., BCBA-D, and Dr. Edward Miguel EdD, BCBA of Portview Preparatory. We produced a 20-minute video of basic training, this video was distributed to the Fire Departments, Police, and First Responders of Huntington Beach, Fountain Valley, and Newport. We are proud to have been recognized by Mayor Kim Carr of Huntington Beach and Mayor Michael Vo of Fountain Valley with awards of proclamation.
Along with our very successful family engagement days, we continue to give back and receive support from the local communities and cities of Huntington Beach and Fountain Valley. Although we specifically focus on the education of first responders and community members as well as our youth an individual does not need to have a diagnosis to have a lack of social skills, sensory needs, or even a speech delay, just to name a few. We are all human beings who inherit learned behaviors. We would like to impact our youth and instill the ability to create organic connections with all individuals. The AMUSE Foundation is a local organization with a mission of educating and training first responders about ASD and the possible scenarios that may occur when interacting with someone on the spectrum. Along with education and training, we want to create a one-stop shop for families. Deniece Ibanez BCBA, with Ausome Solutions, provides parents with additional resources and assists with advocating for families. We create a safe space everyone can "Experience Extraordinary - E2" through a sensory play experience for ALL children. The goal is to educate children young so that they know how to identify, assist, and engage with their peers of all abilities.
We are better together and we are working hard to implement our Awareness and acceptance videos along with training programs to every fire and police department including all first responders, medical personnel, and medical facilities.
ART, MUSIC, AND KINDNESS
OUR THREE PILLARS
AMUSE'S three pillars, Art, Music, and Kindness, is what brought AMUSE to what it is today. We were created and strengthened by this three pillars allowing us to create activities that are engaging, fun, creative, and sensory friendly!
- ART
With AMUSE's Co-Founder and Art Director, Jonathan also known as "Espy", we were able to give life to our murals! The murals have become a great igniter and a conversation starter for AMUSE, but most of all the question "What is Autism?" and "Why AMUSE for Autism?".
- MUSIC
Music, when we ask people to describe music, they often say
"Music is a universal language".
AMUSE was able to connect with many great local musicians with our murals! With the genuine help of these musicians, we are able to create fund-raisers that allowed us to support families, provide sensory items and toys for children of all abilities, and a sensory zone for children to cool down to during our events as well as community events that AMUSE is a part of!
Our parades will never be the same without our volunteer musicians and singers, we are able to have relaxing musical activities for persons of all abilities, parents, families, friends and the whole community!
- KINDNESS
AMUSE is not only built by dedicated loved ones of children with special needs but also persons of all abilities! AMUSE is empowered by these kind people; and we are able to pay it forward by assuring that our goals are always centered with kindness, making our goal to not only help educating our first-responders about special needs, but also keeping our community informed and take a part in raising awareness and acceptance towards the special needs community!
OUR MURALS
"THE CONVERSATION STARTER"
Not all special needs are visible; but through art, music, and kindness which are universal languages, we can make our special needs community's voice louder!
Within the last year, we have been able to successfully distribute our first basic training/awareness video to the first responders of Huntington Beach, Fountain Valley, and Newport Beach and continue to expand our reach. We have donated four murals to the local community of Huntington Beach, CA in an expression of kindness, compassion, unity, and positivity.
The presence of AMUSE's murals in the community has assisted in cultivating our team and families in need of our program. We intend to utilize our resources and continue donating public art, showcasing a spectrum of artists. We are proud to have had thirteen successful events and collaborations with our community between April of 2020 and December 2021.
AMUSE's murals have given us the opportunity to meet and connect with families and friends of persons with special needs and we feel amazed at how art can bring a community together!
We hope to create more murals and connect with more amazing people who are in the same path as us in raising awareness and acceptance towards the special needs community!
Last April 09, 2022, AMUSE donated its latest mural at Tamura Elementary School!
If you are interested to donate for our future projects and support our local artists with food, water, and art materials (others) together with the volunteers, we will be more than glad to receive such support!
We are looking forward to donating more MURALS to our community!