Special Olympics Michigan provides year-round sports training and athletic competition for children and adults with intellectual disabilities. Athletes develop physical fitness, demonstrate courage and experience joy while participating in the sharing of gifts, skills and friendship among their families, Special Olympics athletes and the community. The athletes achieve their dreams with the support of caring volunteers, coaches, family members and staff. Donations from Michigan citizens and businesses provide funding for the program. Special Olympics Unified Champion Schools is a strategy aimed at empowering a generation of students to change their school culture to be more socially inclusive. With sports as the foundation, the three-component model offers activities that equip students with tools and training to create teams, classrooms, and entire schools of acceptance. Unified Champion Schools are schools where students with disabilities feel welcome and are meaningfully included in all school activities, opportunities, and functions. This is accomplished by implementing three components of Unified Champion Schools: Inclusive Student Leadership, Unified Sports, and Whole School Engagement. All three areas are crucial to shift the culture of a school toward inclusion. Once the three components are active, a school is considered a Unified Champion School. The Unified Champion School strategy can be adapted to fit the needs of each school ranging in grade levels Pre-K to college. Each school’s implementation can look and feel different as the strategy is meant to be woven into the school’s existing fabric. Unified Sports: a fully inclusive sports or fitness program that combines an approximately equal number of students with and without intellectual disabilities, such as Special Olympics Unified Sports, Interscholastic Unified Sports, Unified PE, or Unified Intramurals. Whole School Engagement: awareness and education activities that promote inclusion and reach the majority of the school population and all students in the school have opportunities to participate through sustained school-wide activities. Inclusive Youth Leadership: students with and without intellectual disabilities working together to lead and plan advocacy, awareness, and other Special Olympics and related inclusive activities throughout the school year.