Call me an optimist if you must. I prefer to think of myself as an optimistic realist.
I recent wrote an article for Respectability entitled “Turning Crisis Into Opportunity” which offers some glimmers of hope around employment for people with disabilities. I begin by acknowledging the challenges: “It has been said that ‘A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.’ The COVID pandemic has certainly posed tremendous vocational challenges for people with disabilities, who, despite already experiencing an employment rate less than half of people without disabilities, experienced 40% greater job loss with minimal recovery. It has also provided unprecedented opportunities—to develop skills, to continue working from home and in person (for those who currently have jobs) and to think creatively about new opportunities.”
I then note that many people with disabilities and organizations working with them have responded swiftly and creatively. Participants and families in our National Ramah Tikvah Network vocational training programs, located in our 10 Ramah camps in the US and Canada, expressed concerns about social isolation and job skills. In response, we swiftly created TikvahNet, a vocational training and socialization program. We have run two cycles of programming thusfar and are about to launch our 3rd cycle tomorrow evening. In this new cycle, we will continue our vocational training and socializing while also be hearing from model employers in the area of disabilities employment.
This week (tomorrow, Jan 19th), my friend and colleague, Bill Morris of Blue Star Recyclers—with 3 computer and electronic recycling locations in Colorado and one in Chicago—will be participating in) our TikvahNet Tuesday Speaker Series. It will be broadcast on Facebook Live from 735-8 pm ET
We will be showcasing 4 employers which are committed to employing people with disabilities. In the case of Blue Star, people with disabilities are the “secret ingredient” in the success of the business! They have learned that some people with autism can stick with a repetitive task for incredibly long periods of time—in doing so, they are solving a society problem of what to do with old computers, as well as the problem of how to retain workers in this industry with high turnover.
As readers and colleagues know, I am passionate about identifying businesses large and small which train and hire people with disabilities. In my RespectAbility article, I mention two businesses started by Ramah Tikvah participants—Shred Support and Truly Scrumptious by Alexa. My website has a list in progress of all types of businesses across the US which employ people with disabilities. I am learning about new businesses by the day and can’t wait for COVID to end so I can get on the road and see more! Please continue to send more my way! Just yesterday, I learned two cool places in Colorado:
It has been said that “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” The COVID pandemic has certainly posed tremendous vocational challenges for people with disabilities, who, despite already experiencing an employment rate less than half of people without disabilities, experienced 40% greater job loss with minimal recovery. It has also provided unprecedented opportunities—to develop skills, to continue working from home and in person (for those who currently have jobs) and to think creatively about new opportunities.
Many people with disabilities and organizations working with them have responded swiftly and creatively. Participants and families in our National Ramah Tikvah Network vocational training programs, located in our 10 Ramah camps in the US and Canada, expressed concerns about social isolation and job skills. In response, we swiftly created TikvahNET, a vocational training and socialization program.
We recently completed our second 8-week program and will soon begin our third. We offer facilitated socialization time and work in small breakout rooms, using PowerPoint slides and discussions, to address such topics as physical and mental wellness, money and budgeting, laundry and booking skills, resumes and interviews and social media skills and etiquette. In our third cycle, we will bring employers with impressive records of hiring people with disabilities to share what they are looking for in potential employees, and we will use our breakout room time to work on those skills.
Alumni of our programs—some in their 40s and 50s—have shared their journeys from camp and high school graduation to the present, focusing on their employment, social lives and level of inclusion and participation in the Jewish community. There have been heartwarming moments. Austin, who works in a hospital in St. Louis, and Tiffany, who works in a grocery store in Los Angeles, spoke of being essential workers. They and other Tikvah alum feel valued when thanked for performing these essential duties.
Other members of the Tikvah community have productively used their time at home during the pandemic to focus on start-up businesses. Uriel and Jacob, two young Washington, DC-area men with Down Syndrome, have created Shred Support, a shredding business. Alexa, a Long Island, NY-based young woman, also with Down Syndrome, has created Truly Scrumptious by Alexa, selling custom chocolate-covered cookies. Yum!
Beyond our program, Chapel Haven Schleifer Center, a residential school and independent living program in New Haven, CT, runs a program called CareerAbility, founded to meet the need for meaningful employment among its participants. During this time, CareerAbility focused all of their energy on keeping job seekers and working adults engaged in the workforce. They immediately launched virtual offerings while simultaneously providing safe community-based work experiences for adults to perform their career explorations, internships, and jobs. This resulted in clients engaged in 67 community-based job skill development experiences.
It is hard to conceptualize what this will mean post Covid-19. But these tough times demand out-of-the-box thinking, creativity, flexibility and taking calculated risks. There may be an ongoing need for more cleaning and sanitizing at businesses or hospitals. If people remain reluctant to travel to stores, it could be useful to start a delivery or courier business modeled after Good Foot Delivery in Toronto, Canada, which provides personalized point-to-point delivery on foot and public transit, creating employment opportunities for people with disabilities.
As we emerge from the pandemic, what is clear is that we NEED a range of employment options for people with disabilities including small businesses and big companies, on-site and remote options, flexible and varying hours each week–5 hours, 15 hours, 40 hours or more. And these jobs need to exist across a wide range of industries. I have been working to map the landscape of creative places of employment for people with disabilities. I have discovered magicians, IKEA furniture assemblers, bike mechanics, car restorers, high-end cabinet makers, vertical farmers, coders, cybersecurity specialists, mammogram readers and more.
Our tradition tells us that we may sow in tears and reap in joy. Let us not waste the crisis of this pandemic, but reap creative gains in the post-pandemic employment for people with disabilities!
Dean Cohen has fond memories of growing up in the Jewish youth movement of Melbourne, Australia. While Cohen and his peers participated in B’nai Akiva or Habonim youth groups and camps, he remembers that “people with disabilities were excluded. They didn’t have the same social and camp experiences that we had!” In 2014, Cohen started Flying Fox, a camp program for people with disabilities, ages 8-16. The Melbourne-based Flying Fox organization has grown tremendously in six short years.
Flying Fox offers “fun, positive social experiences” to young adults with disabilities. The first camp hosted 19 participants. To date, Fly Fox has provided weekend camp experiences to 250 participants. While the<br>program has “strong Jewish roots,” it is open to participants of all backgrounds.
Cohen, who currently serves as CEO, notes that there are many camping organizations in Australia, and several which serve youth and young adults with disabilities including two Jewish organizations–Camp Sababa (a sister organization in Sydney) and Friendship Circle, affiliated with Chabad. “What makes Flying Fox unique is that it is mainly youth led,” reports Cohen. He is proud of the responsible young people who undergo extensive training and volunteer regularly with Flying Fox. “These are young people who can offer complex support needs for our participants.”
Ricki Sher, Head of Programs, feels the “youthful energy” they offer is “unique and contagious.” The young, enthusiastic volunteers serve as peer mentors for the participants and therefore create an inclusive experience.
Sher envisions a day when “500 or 1000 or 10,000 alumni go out to the world and use their experience to shape a more inclusive world!” Sher, who at 26 years old, playfully considers herself to be “the grandmother of the group,” imagines a day when a former volunteer, positively impacted by the experience of working with Flying Fox, goes on to open a coffee shop—and makes it physically accessible, and employs people with disabilities.” Sher describes Flying Fox weekend camp programs as “fun, with laughs, smiles, lots of energy, music, roller blading, sports, an epic talent show, silent disco and a slip and slide—it is a bubble of fun and happiness!” Camp Wings and camp Sababa provide 4 to 5-night sleepaway camping programs to 30 participants— supported by 80 volunteers- in a rural setting outside of Melbourne. Junior and senior camps both take place during winter and summer school holidays.
The SHOTZ program offers weekend getaways for 6 or 7 campers and their buddies. They take place at Tova House, a home recently purchased by Flying Fox in Lancefield, an hour from Melbourne in Lancefield. Flying Fox also offers SOCS (Siblings of Camp Sababa), a sibling support program for siblings of people with disabilities. They host camps and weekends where participants connect and share life experiences with other siblings of people with disabilities. A recent camp included 50 siblings of people with disabilities. Additional programs accommodate participants with more complex support needs. They typically include 25 campers, 50 buddies, medical personnel, a psychologist and additional adult support. Cohen and Sher are pleased with their program, participants, their families and their amazing volunteers. And they continue to dream. Sher smiles, “My dream is to go national around Australia, and to create Flying Fox hubs around the world!”
The American Camping Association (ACA), which employs more than 320,000 camp staff and serves over 7.2 million children in its 2,400 ACA accredited camps report in a 2017 study that 44% of camps offer specialized programs for individuals with disabilities. They proudly note, “For 120 years, the organized camp experience has been serving individuals with special needs.”
These camps began by serving campers with physical challenges and this “was the beginning of a pattern of the camp community’s response to societal issues affecting campers with a wide variety of diagnoses, including polio, intellectual and physical disabilities, childhood diabetes, cancer, and HIV/AIDS.”
In the Jewish camping world, Herb and Barbara Greenberg, two special education teachers, started the Tikvah Program at Camp Ramah in New England in 1970 for campers with intellectual and developmental disabilities. There has been tremendous growth in the area of inclusion of people with disabilities in Jewish summer camps since that time. According to Jeremy Fingerman, CEO of the Foundation for Jewish Camp, 3,744 campers with disabilities participated in FJC overnight camps in 2019 and 4,145 in day camps.
While many camps did not operate in person in the summer of 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, it is the norm around the world for children with disabilities to participate in summer day and overnight camps and respite camps. These camps differ in affiliation and structure: they may be public or private, faith based or nondenominational (communal), and they may feature various models of camping including fully inclusive, camp within a camp, and separate camps for people with disabilities.
In the United States, overnight camps typically take place during the summer months, and last from several days to 8-weeks. Campers often travel many hours by plan, bus or car to arrive at camp.
In Israel, a country roughly the size of New Jersey, overnight camps are a relatively new phenomena and tend to last from 5 days to 14 days.
The recently established Summer Camps Israel organization aims to promote greater involvement in 30 summer camps throughout Israel. Several camps and organizations in Israel currently meet the needs of participants with disabilities and their families.
Programs Serving Special Populations
Shutaf, a year-round Jerusalem-based program, serves 300 participants, ages 6-30, with and without disabilities. They employ a reverse-inclusion model which brings together participants with diverse developmental, physical, and learning disabilities (75% of participants), alongside participants without disabilities (25% of participants).
Co-founder Beth Steinberg reports, “When we moved to Israel in 2006, the camp world here was underdeveloped. The ideas of an American style camp with values to grow and become was unheard of. We wanted summers to be the best time for our kids and we wanted to serve all kinds of needs.” Summers in Israel are usually very hot. Without camp programs, children often stay home alone or with siblings while parents work.
Steinberg’s program offers a three-week day camp program each August, with arts and crafts, science, music and movement, sports, archery and a ropes course. Steinberg and her Shutaf team quickly responded to the Covid crisis by offering “Camp in a Box,” carefully planned “boxes” containing arts and crafts projects, sports equipment and gardening projects which were delivered and to over 150 participants. “It felt like a
happy gift,” reports Steinberg proudly. Similar boxes are provided to participants and families during the Jewish holidays of Passover (April) and Chanukah (December) when children are on break from school.
Steinberg, a veteran of the camp scene in Israel, reports, “There has been some changes recently in camping, with more choices now and some programs offering short term sleepaway programs.
The Jordan River Village Camp
Camp housed on 245 acres in the Lower Galilee of Northern Israel (near Givat Avni), was established in 2006 and is the 16th a network of 30 camps worldwide, part of the Paul Newman “The Hole in the Wall Gang Camp.” They offer three unique types of camp programs which take place over approximately 40 sessions per year.
One program serves children and adolescents ages of 9 and 18 who present with a wide range of medical conditions and genetic diseases, including cancer, seizure disorders, transplants, and neurological disorders. Director Yakir Sternin proudly reports, “We are the only camp in our organization which offers sessions for participants who or deaf or have hearing impairments, and for children who are blind or have visual impairments.”
Sessions are generally 5-6 days and are for children who do not need parental assistance with self-care or medical care.
Three-day family sessions are offered for parents, siblings and children ages 5-18 who require self-care or medical support. Participants are oftenwheelchair users, present with seizure disorders which are not well-controlled, or are user of ventilators. The camp has also established a relationship with the Ministry of Education where campers with intellectual and developmental disabilities and autism attend 3-4 day sessions with their school staff.
Sternin is pleased and excited that the camp’s sessions bring together participants from very diverse walks of life in Israel, including Jews who are secular, religious and Ultra Orthodox, as well as Christians, Druze, Bedouins and Circassians. In addition, there are two sessions per year for children who come from the Palestinian Authority and Gaza.
“We are on the way to fulfilling a dream,” reports Sternin. “It is one of the most beautiful things when they meet and see eye to eye – when you are fighting for life, it doesn’t matter who your father is and who you pray to! Disability and medical situations create bridges!” Sternin also sees equally strong relationships formed among the over 1000 volunteers who come each year, from very diverse backgrounds.
Is a camp program which integrates children and teenagers at risk and with disabilities, in to five day overnight camping sessions. The two sessions per season take place on the grounds of the Jordan River Valley camp, but is not affiliated with that camp. My Piece of the Puzzle was inspired by the United States based program, Camp Ramapo, in Rhinebeck, New York. According to director Jenna Albaz, half of the participants have such disabilities as autism, Down Syndrome and intellectual disabilities, and half come from “broken homes, dysfunctional families, have no friends, or have a police record.” Elbaz is pleased with how the participants integrate and form friendships. “For the at risk children, it is their first time they have felt loved, unconditionally. For the participants with special
needs, it may be the first time they have friends without special needs and they can just be themselves.” Elbaz adds, “It is win/win—it brings out the best in both populations.” Elbaz is in the process of expanding to also offer school year programs, and a mechina, a pre-army preparatory program.
Other organizations in Israel offering camps for participants with disabilities include:
The Israel Scouts, include and integrate 3000 participants with disabilities including visual and hearing impairments and behavioral disorders. They often host overnight camping trips.
strives to attain full social inclusion of people with physical disabilities. One way to achieve this is through weekend groups and summer camps. Each summer, hundreds of participants and volunteers attend 24 overnight summer camps throughout the country. Sessions last for 5 days and include such activities as kayaking in the north, abseiling (descending rock formations with ropes) in the south, hikes, and the performing of community service.
Is a youth movement for children and youth with and without disabilities. They also run a summer camp in the northern Israel coastal city of Nahariya. It is held over 3 sessions each August and is open to family members as well. Activities include swimming, sports, yoga, plays, magicians and more.
