COLUMBUS, Ga. (WRBL)— Saturday, June 11 one local clinic opened their doors to the community to provide an in-depth view to their newest expansion.

Servicing both Muscogee and Russell County, Ready to Learn ABA is a clinic that utilizes applied behavioral analysis (ABA) to work with individuals diagnosed with, or who suffer from the symptomology of autism spectrum disorder and any other related developmental disability or mental health disorder.

Patients at the clinic range in age from two to 27 years old, and learn everyday tasks to help them to be successful in any environment. Ready to Learn also conducts in home sessions and contracts with Phenix City Schools, a head start program, and a foster care agency to provide services to learners in those environments as well.

Over the last five years, Ready to Learn ABA has acquired multiple suites of their office building located just off Veterans Parkway, and even survived as a small business during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Friends, families, learners and other members of the community toured their newest wing Saturday in a celebration of the clinic’s continuous growth.

The new wing gives Ready to Learn a waiting room for parents, new administrative offices, a records room, and additional space to allow them to renovate the rest of their building, catering to each learner’s individual needs.

Kya Williams, who brought this practice to Columbus, Georgia, spoke to the importance of the additional space.

“The most important thing that this suite offers us is a waiting room. During COVID, our parents were no longer allowed in the building, and we had to utilize our old space in order to meet that six feet social distancing requirement. Now we have a waiting room again. Parents will be able to come into the building again, and that also allowed us to expand our parent training suite and observation space and create that adaptive daily living studio is as well as expand some of the other service areas that we provide at Ready to Learn,” Williams says.

When cutting the ribbon, members of the clinic and community all shouted, “team work makes the dream work,” something Williams highlights as a key component to the clinic’s success.

“It’s really about believing, believing in myself as a leader, but also believing in my team because I can’t do any of this without the team. Them having the drive, the willingness, the understanding to work with the learners and the compassion to stand by the stakeholders… That’s why we’ve grown. The team believes in me, and I believe equally in them,” Williams explains.

Operations Manager at Ready to Learn ABA Jakya Bridges says this expansion solidifies the roots they’ve planted here in Columbus.

“It means that Ready to Learn it’s here to stay and it means that that we have even more of an opportunity to positively impact the community. To introduce ABA, applied behavior analysis, and to show people that it does work and to also change the game when it comes to ABA,” Bridges says.

“Thank you for this opportunity. Thank you for not to Columbus, Georgia, for allowing us to be able to come here and put our fingerprint. Thank you. For all of my learners for giving us the opportunity to be able to provide services. Thank you to the parents for allowing this opportunity to work with their most precious commodity. Thank you to everyone that we contract with and most importantly, thank you to my staff for being with me during the hard times, during the good times, collaborating with me, probing new ideas and concepts,” Williams thanks all who made this expansion possible.