Will You Play With Me?

As a boy, Spencer Hawk loved school field trips to a playground where he could soar on the swings, slip down slides, and make new friends. It was a childhood rite of passage that was only available to Hawk – an elementary student with TAR Syndrome, resulting in amputated limbs – in a few places in the world in the early 2000s. One of them was his hometown of Los Angeles.  

At that playground built by the L.A.-based nonprofit Inclusion Matters by Shane’s Inspiration, Hawk played with typically developing kids on the field trips, which are part of an innovative education program that teaches social inclusion.  

Creating equitable playgrounds where children with disabilities can “form friendships and be honored and respected” is the mission of Inclusion Matters by Shane’s Inspiration, says CEO Tiffany Harris, who co-founded the nonprofit with friends Catherine Curry-Williams and Scott Williams in memory of their son Shane Alexander Williams, who died from complications of spinal muscular atrophy as a newborn.  

In Shane’s memory, the friends rallied community support and built a playground for kids of all abilities in Los Angeles’ Griffith Park in 2000. Then they heard from a parent who said driving across the city was tiring for their son Aidan who had special needs. Could they build another one on the West Side? 

Inclusion Matters is now a global inclusion movement with 40 inclusive playgrounds around Los Angeles and 35 and counting on four continents. The playgrounds are designed for ALL kids while accounting for wheelchair mobility needs, hearing and sight impairments, sensory processing challenges, and more. The nonprofit’s inclusion curriculum for schools has been delivered to 50,000 Los Angeles students in 250 schools, downloaded in 65 countries, and a new graduate-level curriculum is rolling out at universities. 

Today, Hawk is in college and an inclusion advocate for Inclusion Matters, as well as a Kindness Ambassador for Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation (BTWF). 

“What made the playground so amazing wasn’t just the equipment, but the kindness that blossomed everywhere,” he said when he was invited to speak about the value of inclusion at a virtual BTWF Talk on kindness and family in 2020. “I would not be who I am today without that kindness.”