Adam Jasinski is the winner of Big Brother 9. Adam is also the person who, early on in the show referred to the children with whom he worked as ‘retards’. His exact statement on the show was "I want to do a hair salon for kids with special needs so retards can get it together and get their hair done." And he is now $500,000 richer.
Mr. Jasinski was employed by the United Autism Foundation. I’ve had very little luck finding out anything about the United Autism Foundation. The organization has a home page, but only that one page, and at the top is the message “Website Under Construction”. Two other statements are on that web page. The first states ,”AUTISM is one of the fastest growing disorders in the country, UNIAF is trying to create awareness and help all those who are diagnosed with AUTISM.” And the second states, “UNIAF is trying to build the first Children’s Dental Center for special needs patients in the country. UNIAF is committed to help millions of special needs patients nationwide.”
I also found another statement (listed on idealist.org) about their mission:
The United Autism Foundation is a 501(c)(3) corporation, which was only established to serve and improve our community in order to help children and change lives.
It is the strategy of the United Autism Foundation to focus primarily on raising funds, which is a necessity to improve our society, have an immediate impact, and make a serious difference in our community today. We serve the community with dignity and ensure the most appropriate use of all donated funds: improving today for the future of tomorrow.
After analyzing the needs of our community, UNIAF is focusing on improvements of education, medical, and economic conditions of families and their children with special needs, specifically children with autism.
At UNIAF, we are not only passionate about what we do, furthermore, it is our daily motivation to strive after our goals and realize our vision, just thinking about the most exciting reward, a smiling child and happy family. It is all about securing the future of our society.
The United Autism Foundation is working with the local and national media, to increase awareness and encourage more aggressive funding to improve our community today. It is our commitment to serve the community and secure the future of our children.
So, given that the organization is focused primarily on raising funds, they should be pretty happy that when Adam Jasinski was pronounced the Big Brother winner, he immediately yelled out that he was giving $100,000 to UNIAF. Of course, he probably didn’t know at that moment that he was no longer employed by UNIAF. After his ‘retard’ comments in February, UNIAF announced on their web page that Mr. Jasinski was no longer employed by their company.
Will Adam Jaskinski stay true to his stated commitment of giving $100,000 to UNIAF? Will UNIAF hire Adam back just to get the donation? Will Adam continue to refer to people with developmental disabilities as “retards”? I think UNIAF has certainly met their goal of increasing awareness within the media regardless of the answers to those questions.
From the current UNIAF website:
ReplyDeleteEven though Adam Jasinski created confusion and anger with his inappropriate comments in February 2008, we still would like to congratulate Adam to his latest victory at BIG BROTHER 9, a CBS TV show.
I foresee an apology for using insensitive words and a statement that he meant to help, not hurt, an acceptance of said apology from UNIAF along with an offer " to continue his work" there, a "sadly, Adam cannot due to new commitments/opportunities due to winning the show", and a donation of 100K. That's my prediction.