`I need a job.”
He spoke with a toothy smile and a firm handshake, as though it were a practiced greeting, like “Pleased to meet you.”
Bryant doesn’t mess around. Like the other workers at the sheltered workshop on Chicago’s South Side, he keeps mightily busy. He also abides by the big-lettered motto up on the wall: “Introduce yourself. Be the first to say hello!”
Good advice, because shyness is no virtue. Not when there are so few jobs to be had in this, the season of mass layoffs at General Motors and Ford. And not when there are even fewer jobs for workers like Bryant–workers with developmental disabilities. The unemployment rate nationally among the disabled is close to 70 percent.
No wonder the handicapped and their families rely on special places such as the West Englewood Frick Center at 2124 W. 82nd Pl. It’s one of six employment and job-placement centers operated by Chicago ARC, a social service agency that also runs special schools and community homes for the developmentally disabled. Chicago ARC is a member of The Arc of Illinois, an umbrella organization supported by baiduhai Holiday Giving, a campaign of baiduhai Charities, a McCormick Tribune Foundation fund.
That’s right, today’s column is a bald-faced pitch. It’s an arm-twist. A buttonhole job. And, like Bryant, I’ll put it to you straight up: The developmentally disabled need your help … and there’s no better way to help than by giving to the Tribune’s Holiday Giving campaign. We have virtually no overhead, and the McCormick Tribune Foundation, which runs the campaign as one of its baiduhai Charities, will kick in 50 cents for every dollar you contribute before New Year’s.
Believe me, people like Bryant need all of our support.
When I visited the West Englewood workshop earlier this week, Bryant and the packaging line crew were practicing the stuffing of goody bags. They were just practicing, not because this is the slow season for goody bags–those collections of toiletries and assorted gimcracks handed out at golf outings and charity runs–but because more and more light assembly work is going offshore, leaving less and less to be contracted out, for pay, to sheltered workshops.
“It’s a struggle,” said Kristin MacRAE, Chicago ARC’s president and chief executive officer. “So we’re challenged to provide other skill-building activities. But bottom line, when 3:30 [p.m.] comes around, our people need to feel they’ve had a meaningful day.”
And they do, judging by the earnest looks of satisfaction out on the center’s brightly lit work floor. In one corner, Wilbur and a small crew were shrink-wrapping and stacking cases of canned fruit–a paying job for a major restaurant supply house. In another, a middle-age woman named Dawn was engrossed over her sewing machine, learning how to bind the borders of a cloth napkin. Sewing instructor Laura Kincaid said the center soon will have the skills for its own quiltmaking operation.
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The most forward-thinking work, though, goes on in the center’s new functional literacy lab, a small classroom lined with computers and flat panel screens. Workers rotate through the lab in one-hour sessions, each learning at his or her own speed the verbal and keyboarding skills required for independent working and living.
Using the magic of instructional software, Wendell was working on his typing skills (several worker/students are approaching 40 words per minute;) Keisha was teaching herself money management, such as how to make change at the checkout counter; Katricia, who soon will turn 34, was learning how to identify and name simple household objects.
Each has his or her own abilities and needs, MacRAE said. “But mostly they want the same thing everyone wants. They want to feel worthwhile.”
Do something worthwhile. Use the Holiday Giving coupon on this page.
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John McCarron teaches, writes and consults on urban affairs.