I am Amanda Quintino dos Santos, a first-generation student and child of a single parent. Growing up my mom always worked multiple jobs and had to fight very hard to give me a good education. Even during the tough times, my mom always made sure to put money aside for me to be able to participate in extracurricular activities. Since I was three years old my mom signed me up for dance classes. As the years went on I fell more and more in love with dance. In middle school, I started volunteering for Special Olympics Massachusetts soccer and basketball, where I would pair up one-on-one with an athlete with developmental disabilities and play alongside them in practice, games, and competitions. From the beginning I have always loved working with the kids and watching them grow in a sport they would eventually compete in. Unfortunately, when I entered high school my dance studio closed and I quickly transitioned into and joined the cheer and track & field teams at my high school, but soon I realized that I missed dancing. I then realized that there were many people in my life that did not have the opportunity to dance, and they were the kids. Not even a month into the school year I decided that I wanted to give them this opportunity; that is when Unified Dance was created. I reached out to the Recreation Department in my town with the idea of creating a dance class for children with special needs and they loved it. We found a place to practice and the classes started immediately. The first time there were about five students, the next week there were ten, and soon the room was full. The class was such a hit I taught it for four years and after graduating I passed it on for another student at the high school to take over. But before I graduated, about a year before COVID-19 broke out, I was already wondering how I could continue my involvement with this program after I went to college. Over the years, parents were requesting that we have the dances taped on video for easier access to the classes when they could not make a class or if there was a holiday. I reached out to Westborough TV, our local channel and they loved the idea. During the summer of 2019 we began filming for Unified Dance with Amanda and Friends. All aspects of the show were tailored to children with developmental disabilities. The songs were clean for all ages, the movements were simplified with room for adaptation, and the background and foreground had minimal colors to reduce the stimuli. Originally, the individual dances were posted on their website but very quickly they were compiled into episodes that were played directly on their channel. The show was gaining more views than any of their other material so we continued filming more but due to the pandemic we were unable to tape as much as we would like. Unified Dance with Amanda and Friends is now being used by teachers throughout the school district in my town. The show has become a part of the curriculum for physical education classes with students with developmental disabilities. It has been an honor getting to work with these kids and being able to offer them an experience that wasn’t available to them before. If I am a recipient of the WCEJ Thornton Foundation's Low-Income Scholarship, this will allow me to take on an unpaid internship instead of working another job.