According the site's creators, who are also parents of an autistic child, the purpose is to help parents offset the financial costs of raising an autistic child. And let me tell you it does cost: whether you are on the vaccine train or not, whether you subscribe to a gluten and casein free diet or not, whether your mission is fighting to get the school district to treat your child with respect and provide mandated(!) services, or fighting your insurance to cover occupational therapy, or just providing your child with the one brand of soap he'll tolerate or the few types of food he'll eat.
Here's what the site's creators envision:
- A community based, password protected website for families with children on the spectrum.
- A free-market (a la "Freecycle" for autism), where families can give those things they are done with and get needed items and services from each other for free.
- Discounts from companies that have products which are needed by the community.
- A knowledge portal that can be easily navigated.
- Social networking tools, such as, video posts, podcasts, blogs and chats.
- Sweepstakes, profit sharing and fund-raising to benefit the member families directly.
I do have more to say about the sex industry, but it was kind of making my brain hurt to think about it, so I'm taking a little break and will come back to that topic next week.
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