Jobs for People w/disAbility Creates Independence

Paul who has an intellectual disABILITY has been working in Recycling, however staff began to notice that he was having a hard time meeting his daily goals in paper selection.  Finally, one person talked to the psychologist and suggested that maybe Paul needed glasses.  The psychologist helped Paul to get an eye exam and yes, Paul had a vision problem.  FE was able to find a donor to help to pay for glasses for Paul but there is more to the story. Because of Paul’s struggle FE decided to start a new program called Super Lenses. Workers at FE can qualify for a free eye exams and for a discount on glasses and pay for them through deductions in their pay checks through a certain company.

We checked with this company and decided to see if they would do free eye exams for all of our young people whether they were working or not.  So we made a list of 80 people who needed exams. We are also including the children from the special education programs for super lenses.  We are going to have the exams in early Nov. and when those young people with a handicap come for their exams which will be in our center they will also receive several other health orientations.  We have a program for understanding Dengue Fever and the government insurance also has a program for testing for Diabetes.  

In the meantime, Paul has been ever so excited about being able to see things clearly that he has doubled his daily goals in recycling selecting papers and he cannot keep quiet about how glasses have changed his life.  This in turn has animated other young people to sign up for the eye exams.  We are starting a campaign to earn money to see if we can get glasses for those who show a need from the exams, our dream is to earn enough before Christmas so that all can enjoy the holidays more brightly and clearly.

We try to find out the needs of the young people in our work program so that they will have success at maintaining their jobs. There are so many aspects that we are never bored in the social labor program. Orientation is the most important so that we find the right job for the right person. 

You can’t really use the same idea more than once because the world of work is so dynamic that it might not work the second time around.  One has to have a bag of ideas to be able to keep these young people working. So we just recently placed several in our Kraft bag project which is meant to help eliminate the plastic bags by making Kraft bags.  Our young people are so proud of their work and we are also as we say thank you to all who have contributed to this project in global giving so that our young people can work in an environment that is positive and life giving, as they learn the culture of work through FE.