Rollin' Along The River, Sat.6/11, 9:00AM No. Mississippi Regional Park

Over its sixty years in existence, AccessAbility, Inc. has become a leader in providing immediate, paid work and training for people with significant barriers to employment. In 2010, AccessAbility served over 650 people in all programs. Founded in 1948 to support school-age children with cerebral palsy, our original work was to provide education for children with developmental disabilities at a time when the public school system could not accommodate such children. As the education community changed and these children entered the mainstream of public education, AccessAbility began serving adults with disabilities by offering supportive employment and community inclusion programs.

Later, responding to the drive for welfare reform that began in the late 1990s, AccessAbility began offering innovative employment programs to people who have barriers to work other than disability.

We have three work programs which include; supporting people born with a developmental disability, people later on in life who had a disability occur and people transitioning off of welfare to work. As people are aging in our programs, or for those that are unable to work or choose not to work, we have a recreation/leisure program to provide community inclusion for all.

AccessAbility provides work at its production facility on site and at local area businesses where particpants gain the skills to work in the private sector. Coaches and supervisers provide the soft skills training needed to get and keep a job.

Among the in-house business services provided by AccessAbility, for immediate, paid employment by participants, are document imaging and destruction, light assembly, packaging, janitorial services, and the newest venture, Imagine Design, which provides employment and training in tasks ranging from printing and frame making, to assembly and distribution of items such as framed affirmations, bookmarks and the like.

Through its Project Connect program AccessAbility supported over 300 people in 2010, all of them living below poverty guidelines, more than half are women, nearly all representing diverse communities, and the majority of them young mothers and fathers, find better lives by acquiring a paying job that offers training in the hard skills and the soft skills necessary to gain and maintain employment in the private sector.

Our THIRD annual walk-roll-athon will support all of our programs.