Night to Shine: Celebrating People in the Special Needs Community
Night to Shine is an event for people in the special needs community to celebrate the prom the never had.
Photo taken at Night to Shine, provided by photography team.
Night to Shine is a beautiful event where people ages 14 and older in the special needs community celebrate the prom they want to experience again or simply never had. Hundreds of people in the community come together each year in February to celebrate this magical night.
Night to Shine, was founded by Tim Tebow in 2014. The Tim Tebow foundation works with churches all over the United States to create and fund this occasion. Each year there are many volunteers that help with things such as hair, make-up, shoe shining, food service, photography, etc. At Night to Shine, the people attending are made to feel like they are royalty and are referred to as “kings” and “queens,” according to Julie Holmberg, a volunteer for Night to Shine.
“The kings and queens would come in, and it was just the best. They would just feel like a million bucks prior to going into the dance,” Holmberg says.
Night to Shine is an event to help the people of the special needs community feel loved, and create relationships with people according to Melinda Bortolazzo, co lead of Night to Shine.
“They’ve been isolated. You know, the time they go to school, they’re in a separate classroom,” Bortolazzo says. “They don’t really get integrated with their peers and then when they graduate high school, it’s hard for them to find jobs, they lose support that typical school provides for them and so it’s really about building relationships so that we can all be intermingled and really get to see people with special needs for who they are and how awesome they are and how they’re just like you and I, they want relationships, they want to be accepted.”
Night to Shine brings so much bliss to people in the special needs community. The main goal is to make the people in the community feel special and loved according to Holmberg.
“The main goal is to make them feel special and beautiful just as they are – to give them a reason to celebrate and be celebrated,” Holmberg says.
The main focus of the event is to bring people together, people in the community and people who work with people in the special needs community, according to Holmberg.
“It brings the best out in people, when we get to serve along with others that consider themselves just as fortunate as us and yet we can sometimes look at that as limitations. They see it as a gift. So I think that when you can serve as a community, it changes us for the better, because it reminds us of the things to be grateful for,” Holmberg says.
Night to Shine shows people who volunteer and attend connect with the people in the special needs community and grow relationships with them. According to Bortolazzo.
“It’s really about building relationships so that we can all be intermingled and really get to see people with special needs for who they are and how awesome they are and how they’re just like you and I, they want relationships, they want to be accepted. They want to be loved. They just express it in a different way. I hoped that it removed barriers so that people would feel more comfortable around people with disabilities,” Bortolazzo says.
Night to Shine is an event that many people look forward to every year, people within the special needs community and volunteers. Due to Covid the event hasn’t been held in a couple of years but there are hopes to have this magical event return in 2024.
Many people look forward to Night to Shine Every year, both people within the special needs community and the volunteers.
