Friendship Works With Next Generation of Volunteers

Friendship Industries is an organization on a mission. While Friendship’s Mission Statement is “developing and maintaining employment and training opportunities for persons with disabilities in integrated work environments”, it has been unofficially expanded to include our students of today, recognizing that they are our volunteers and leaders, of tomorrow.   Friendship values accountability not only to the local community, but to the global community as well. And, these values are shared in innovative ways; utilizing the talent stored within our local universities. Friendship has logged student volunteer hours from various fields of study, including Marketing, Business, Public Relations and, of course, Social Work.

Erin Cox, a graduating senior from James Madison University’s (JMU) Social Work Department, performed a volunteer internship at Friendship this year. Erin brought a fresh, new perspective to a nagging problem at Friendship…how to effectively train the trainers. By uniquely and effectively combining Social Work and Marketing, Erin developed the Work Skills Empowerment Specialist training program.   People with disabilities exist in a world that frequently does not accommodate them, because they do not always fit into the norms that our society has established. Consequently, they are often unaccepted, under-estimated, and unfulfilled in their lives. Yet, Friendship provides a work environment within our community where persons with disabilities, who are referred to as our “Clients”, can not only feel adequate, but also excel to perform a job successfully.   Erin’s premise was simple; each Friendship Industries non-staff employee, known as “Supervisor Aides” and “Production Aides”, is directly or indirectly involved in teaching work skills to people with disabilities. Although the Aides learn these things as they work with Friendship’s client population, everyone would benefit if Aides were provided a certain level of awareness and education about disabilities. Erin suggested that it is important to ensure a cohesive and current knowledge base of best practice methods and values that should be implemented when working with our Clients.

With approval from Friendship’s management team, Erin developed a survey to distribute to the Aides to collect data on the level of interest in receiving further training, and on what subjects they would like to be trained. After the subject areas for training sessions were determined, Erin contacted prospective community members who had expertise in the selected subject areas and asked them to participate in the program. This resulted in less cost for Friendship because outside resources were used to implement the program. It also further “marketed” Friendship to the surrounding community, and created a higher awareness of the services available through Friendship, which is important for all social service providers.   The subject areas selected were:       Understanding Disabilities: The values and ethics that should be used when working with persons with disabilities;      Integrating a strength-based perspective when teaching work skills to empower and advocate for clients;      Positive Behavioral Intervention;      Communication skills for working with persons with disabilities;      In Our Own Voices-fostering an understanding and awareness of what it is like to live with a mental illness; and      Crisis Intervention.  The training program lasted six weeks, and an evaluation was given at the last training session for the group participants to fill out to assess if the objectives of the training program were achieved.   Erin arranged to utilize industry presenters such as professors from JMU in the areas of Social Work and Psychology, a counselor from National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and Kent Stoneburner, one of the Rehabilitation staff members at Friendship. Erin’s training program was also implemented with the goal in mind of making it an ongoing effort at Friendship to inform all Aides who work directly with Clients.  Upon completion, each participant received a certificate entitled “Friendship Work Skills Empowerment Specialist,” which acknowledges that these employees are now better prepared and informed to teach work skills to persons with disabilities.     Thanks to Erin’s program, all employees, will mutually benefit from a more formal approach to learning about these key issues.  They are now better equipped to meet Friendship’s Mission and ensure that Friendship is an efficient and effective Employment Service Organization with satisfied employees.

Of course, the main goal of conducting this training program was to give the Supervisor Aides and Production Aides the knowledge, skills, and values needed to work with persons with disabilities. Additionally, Erin provided new marketing opportunities for Friendship and walked away with a greater appreciation for her chosen career path in working directly with the population that Friendship Industries exists to serve, and the trainers who do the training. Developing the Work Skills Empowerment program will enhance Erin’s ability to continue providing opportunities for others as she moves through life.