Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jen Knott. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Jen, thanks for joining us today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

Our mission is to utilize fully inclusive recreation therapy programs to connect people with and without disabilities to community recreation, wellness, and lifelong leisure. We believe everyone should have access to quality recreation and recreation therapy programs. Often recreation spaces have difficulty providing adaptations to include people with disabilities in their programming. We strive to help recreation spaces provide and adapt for their residents with disabilities and also provide individualized programming to address all needs and achieve goals. Recreation allows us all to express ourselves, participates in fun and engaging activities, and promote health and wellness for the lifelong. I am very passionate about making these experiences that we all have access to so easily, available to everyone with the same ease.

Jen, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am a recreation therapist and the founder and Executive Director at Rec2Connect. I am very passionate about equal access for all people to recreation and making recreation spaces inclusive and accessible for all. I have a cousin who has a disability and I saw the difference growing up in the recreation opportunities I had and what he had access to. As I chose my career path in college to major in recreation therapy, I fell in love with being able to provide clinical, therapeutic programming using recreation as the delivery method. I had the opportunity to volunteer at Hattie Larlham, in their aquatic therapy department and I fell in love with the healing and magic of the water. We would take children in the water, out of their wheelchairs who often were medically fragile, sometimes on ventilators, and when they would get in the water, you saw their eyes light up, their body relax and pure joy. The way the water provides the sensory stimulation, support, resistance, and buoyancy, provided so many therapeutic benefits. I volunteered there for over 2 years and knew whatever path I took in my career, I wanted to work in the water.

I did my internship at the Cleveland Clinic Childrens Hospital for Rehabilitation in recreation therapy and aquatic therapy with children in their inpatient hospital. We provided children who had experienced a life changing surgery, accident, or injury with recreation therapy programming to work on individualized goals in recreation activities that they enjoyed, to promote health, wellness, and overall functioning. I then went on to work in The Center for Autism at the Cleveland Clinic. I assisted in the classroom, working on IEP goals and recreation skills throughout the day. I was doing very meaningful and impactful work in these settings, but when children went home, there not many if any community-based recreation therapy organizations to provide continued weekly programming. I realized the huge need for recreation programming that focused on providing more community based opportunities, but also working on achieving individualized lifelong goals people with disabilities face. It needed to be adaptable for each person, with the knowledge and expertise of the provider to accommodate for anyone that wanted to access recreation in their community.

Rec2Connect started with 1 person who I worked at the school with who loved swimming and I started seeing him in his community pool in 2005. Another family saw me at the Mandel JCC where we swam and asked if I could also see their son in aquatic therapy. Overtime, both children made considerable progress in not only their swim skills, but also balance, gait, motor planning, strengthening, communication, community engagement, and more! Both families and my parents and now husband encouraged me to start my own business doing aquatic therapy for all who need it in the community. At the time, I had quit working at CCF and was waitressing, where I was making more and had more flexible hours. I was thinking of changing career paths and becoming a party planner. My mom said “you have a gift and you would be wasting it becoming a party planner. More families need you then just the 2 you are seeing now.” That was all it took to hear and I decided with 0 business background I would start Rec2Connect.

14 years later, we are providing so much more for people with disabilities besides swimming. Although we still provide aquatic therapy and adapted aquatics, and my first 2 clients are still with us today, we have grown with them and all of our families needs over time. We provide an adapted USA and paralympic swim team, fitness classes, school based recreation therapy, adult social clubs, rock climbing, kayaking, art therapy, music and movement, programming with Adult day programs for health and wellness, trainings, family events, hiking, biking, outdoor programming, consultative work and so much more! We want recreation in any space in Northeast Ohio to be accessible to everyone and are dedicated to finding ways to do that. Everyone has the right to live the most healthy, active lifestyle they want and we are here to help people who are often left out of the planning in recreation spaces to do so.

I have always played sports, and still at age 43 play soccer weekly and sports and recreation is very important to my health and well being. I believe, and Rec2Connect values this premise for everyone, with and without disabilities. I am most proud of everything we do, how we adapt and listen to the needs of our participants and families and want to do our very best to provide them with the same experiences and opportunities their peers have. We provide services from age 1 through 100+ and believe everyone deserves access and quality, intentional recreation programming on a regular basis.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

During Covid, everything shut down for everyone. People with disabilities, who are often already isolated in their recreation opportunities, experienced that even more during the pandemic. Virtual programming can be difficult for many of our participants and not a reasonable service to address their needs.

Rec2Connect was an LLC when I started it in 2009. The goal was always to be a non profit, but the advice I received form my lawyer and accountant at the time was start it as an LLC then form a non-profit if you can sustain it, then move programs into NP. I started to NP in 2014. I ran 2 organizations for 6 years with 2 social medias, programs, books, everything. It was very difficult to manage the needs of both and I wanted to make that change in 2019. I developed a business plan, presented it to our board then voted yes in Feb 2020. The world shut down March 2020. We laid everyone off in LLC, which was devastating. But within a week, we rehired people in NP slowly and started offering telehealth services, equipment delivery services, a hike club, bike program, eventually swimming in backyard pools, and eventually back to offering our pre-pandemic programs and now so much more. We came back stronger then ever and are thriving because of the creative, hard work of our board, and team.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://rec2connect.org/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rec2connectfoundation/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Rec2ConnectFoundation/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/rec2connect-llc?trk=public_post_feed-actor-name
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/R2CFoundation