The Regional Access and Mobilization Project will host its first scavenger hunt.

The RAMP scavenger hunt will provide DeKalb County residents and community leaders the opportunity to adopt a disability for a day.

“The purpose is to broaden awareness within the community in reference to the challenges of people who live in DeKalb County who have disabilities,” said Gracie Warren, DeKalb RAMP services manager. “We want to bring those challenges to the forefront of the minds of people in the community who can make changes.”

The scavenger hunt will take place from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Thursday at the RAMP office, 1022 W. Lincoln Highway. Participants will gather at the office for a roundtable discussion from 10 a.m. to noon the following day to discuss their experiences.

“Each team will be assigned a random task to complete in a limited time frame,” Warren said. “They will have to live the life of the individual portrayed on the card and will experience the challenges that many people experience on a daily basis.”

One RAMP employee will accompany each team of three. The assigned tasks are very specific and were chosen based on the community challenges RAMP is aware of, Warren said.

She gave the example of a paraplegic on a fixed income needing to find transportation to the public aid office. The roundtable discussion will allow participants to compare such experiences.

“We’ll sit down and talk with participants and discuss suggestions to overcome the problems they encountered,” Warren said. “It will bring the people who can make change within the county together to come up with potential resolutions.”

Access to transportation, medical services and affordable housing are three of the main issues RAMP seeks to address. Warren said these issues are not new but sometimes get overlooked.

“That’s one of the areas RAMP has been very vocal about,” said State Representative Robert Pritchard, referring to the shortage of accommodating houses within the county for those with disabilities. “They’ve been trying to work with developers, with some attempts more successful than others, to have a percentage of development that is more accessible and has some of the features that people with disabilities would need and would be potential purchasers of.”

Seventeen different organizations have agreed to take part in the hunt so far. Pritchard, members of the DeKalb Chamber of Commerce, Sycamore Police Department representatives and Kevin Poorten, president and CEO of Kishwaukee Community Hospital, are just some of those participating.

“I don’t have physical limitations,” Pritchard said, “So it wasn’t until I started pushing my aunt around in a wheelchair that I really became aware of optometrists and dentists and other types of services people need that are not easily accessible.”

Today is the last day to sign up for the scavenger hunt.

Interested persons or organizations can contact Gracie Warren at 815-756-3202.