Reality Kitchen Nonprofit is expanding the unique job training and life enhancing supports we provide to adults who experience intellectual and developmental disabilities in Eugene, Oregon. With the bakery and cafe team, they receive mentoring and job skills training to strengthen independence and confidence, while gaining a community of friends. Your gift will ensure we can provide supports to more adults with disabilities so they will have every opportunity to succeed and gain a safe future.
Adults with disabilities in Oregon report that lack of vocational skills and limited work experience significantly limit their opportunity to find employment and gain independence from social support programs. Finding a work setting where their strengths are appreciated and their needs are understood is difficult. Finding stable, long-term employment is so far out of reach that many do not even attempt to find a job and are stagnated into low-income poverty.
Reality Kitchen Nonprofit offers a port in this storm for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Participants work in an integrated community environment and receive individualized services to overcome identified barriers to successful employment in the least restrictive setting. Our students gain marketable skills, work history and mentoring from highly trained coaches. Their colleagues model workplace social skills and behavioral mentoring while everyone also has fun.
We launch our students from the secure base of our bakery into the community where they find long term employment to provide for their financial success. Unemployment for people with disabilities is more than double that of people with no disability in the US. Our students are gaining the skills and support they need to combat hiring biases and workplace inequity for a lifetime. Our mission is to create pathways to employment for young adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
