Youth With Disabilities Entrepreneurship the Great Equalizer

Today's story is about some  students in a self-contained program at Mead High School.   They are more like the general population than many will ever realize.  Employment is so hard out for anyone little alone a person with a significant  disability . 

They go through the steps filling out applications wait for t the call about the job and not a single call or interview these days, not even a screw you  Not so sure all the employment vendor are doing right by our popultion, I had two postionsopen and sent what i was looking for to 7 of our vendors and about two weeks into it not one call or bit of effort to getting the word out.  The companies over use the bussinesses now who will use people with disabilities and many students tell they do not feel welcome at these places anymore. 

So one day they said, hmmmm' we want to start our own business we have ideas and drive we need to succeed.  They are beginning to start their  own stand-alone candy machine business that we they manage with support from school staff. Each team member will be responsible for maintaining the machine, filling it with candy, and collecting quarters to deposit weekly. We will travel to schools in our community to teach students with disabilities that they too can be entrepreneurs, if they have an idea and appropriate support!  Finding paid employment is difficult for usheck for anyone there are 95,000,000 out of the work force cause unemployment has stoped. Working for ourselves can empower us to live more independently than we thought possible.