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Community Corner

Company Makes Super Donation to Center for Exceptional Families

Livonia-based company Power Capes gave superhero capes to the CEF Tuesday, which will go home with 50 kids with special needs.

Youth at Oakwood's Center for Exceptional Families in Dearborn received a super surprise Tuesday when Livonia-based company Power Capes stopped by with 50 capes to donate to the kids.

Power Capes does just as its name implies: the small business comprised mostly of moms creates customized, handmade "superhero" capes for kids in a variety of colors and designs. The difference is that instead of mimicking capes of famous heroes like Superman or Wonder Woman, these capes celebrate the super qualities of each child who wears them.

And for CEF, allowing their youth to become superheroes gave them one more thing to play with–and learn from. The center serves mentally and physically disabled children from all over southeast Michigan.

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CEF Director Tammy Morris explained that the first group of kids to receive the capes were part of a play group that brings together five developmentally disabled children with five normally developing children from the University of Michigan Early Childhood Education Center once a week. There, they all hone their social skills together.

"The capes are plain, so kids are going to focus on superhero social skills they’re working on in the play group, and they’re going to design them and craft them and make them their own," Morris said. "So if they’re working on super sharing–that kind of thing–then they’ll design their own social skill cape."

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In addition, Morris said, many of the capes will be given out at the center's upcoming birthday party for youth—another event where capes will be an added surprise to an already highly anticipated event for CEF kids and their families.

"All of our special events are free for families, so it’s nice to have stuff to be able to give to them, and have a theme," Morris added. "The nice thing about capes is that we can custom-make them, so instead of Superman, they’re Super Jason, or whoever they are."

Power Capes founder Holly Bartman said she has done donations before to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, but never specifically to kids with special needs. As a former teacher for five years at a Redford Union Schools center for emotionally impaired teens, she said feeling like a superhero is especially important to kids who struggle, or are different than their peers.

"I think it allows them to be someone different," she said. "It’s a costume, but it also empowers them to be the person they want to be, but maybe are too shy or a little awkward. So it helps."

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