Sydney Meininger, a student in the transitions program at Nashoba, was recently made a Youth Ambassador for the Massachusetts Special Olympics chapter.

Sydney plays basketball with Special Olympics Massachusetts and is on Nashoba’s Unified track team. Because she is a Youth Ambassador for Special Olympics, she has been given the opportunity to go to San Diego California for a week this February to attend a training conference with other Youth Ambassadors from all over the world.  

She explains that Special Olympics means a lot to people with intellectual disabilities because, “you get to be on a team and with a disability to be on a school team sometimes can be a challenge. But to be involved in Special Olympics is a way for you to be like your peers.”  

Sydney is also the Treasurer for the Nashoba Best Buddies chapter, and is the first student with an intellectual disability to hold the role. “I feel more involved in our school and even though I’ve graduated, I still see a lot of my friends because a lot of them are still in Best Buddies.”

After she graduated last year, Sydney moved into the transitions program at Nashoba. She is currently attending a wide range of job sites from working in kitchen doing meal prep, to her favourite job, an assistant gym teacher at Florence Sawyer.

As far as what she wants to do for the future, “I’m not really sure what I want to do. I want to eventually find a job either for Special Olympics or Best Buddies.”