Employing People With Developmental Disabilities

In this week’s The Faces of Business Episode, our guest speaker was Mike Pennacchi. Mike is the Founder and Owner of Network Protocol Specialties. His company provides network analysis training, network design advisory, and network problem diagnosis.

We live in a world where employing people with developmental disabilities is not often considered as a way to fill employment requirements. However, our guest today works specifically helping expand the employment opportunities of these individuals.

In this week’s The Faces of Business Episode, our Guest Speaker was Debbie Meyers. Debbie is the Executive Director at SKCAC Industries and Employment Services. She has worked with SKCAC for almost 40 years.  SKCAC is a company that helps people with developmental disabilities find employment.

The conversation started with Damon introducing Debbie and asking her about employing people with developmental disabilities. To this, Debbie shared the history of SKCAC. She said that this company started in 1967 with a few families in South King County.

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All these families brought together their public school graduated children and decided to start a community where their children can work. At first, it was just general things but later they got a contract with an airline for cleaning headset tubes.

This is how SKCAC started its journey. After this, Damon asked Debbie that where has she seen the most success while employing people with developmental disabilities? To this, she said that at first people only got jobs as janitorial staff or staff at the grocery stores.

However, now things are getting better because there is a vocational rehabilitation training center in the US. Through this, everyone can find out places where they are hiring.

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Further talking about employing people with developmental disabilities, Debbie explained how SKCAC works. She said that when they connect a person with the employers, they help them get the job and then also pay for the training sessions. After this, they stick around for as long as the employer thinks they need to for the person.

This is how they help in employing people with developmental disabilities. Adding to the conversation, Debbie also said that things would have been a lot easier if the employers knew that there is a place where they have employees who are ready to work.

Moving on, Debbie talked about some of the issues that the people at SKCAC have to face. She said that the ones seeking a job have a transportation issue. Therefore, if this resolves, they are good to go.

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Further, Debbie shared all the programs for employing people with developmental disabilities that they are running these days. These included packaging and assembling or labeling things. Moreover, they also work with large manufacturers.

By the end of the conversation, Damon asked Debbie about what she wanted to do when it comes to businesses and employing people with developmental disabilities. To this, Debbie said that all she wants is to open every door for people with disabilities to work.

The conversation ended with Damon thanking Debbie for her time.

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43:16

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, employees, business, facility, helping, disabilities, employer, companies, untapped resource, work, sk, northwest airlines, places, cac, started, opportunity, job, hire, debbie, shipped

SPEAKERS

Damon Pistulka, Debbie Meyers

 

Damon Pistulka  00:05

All right, everyone, Welcome once again to the faces of business. I’m your host, Damon Pistulka. And I am so excited today for my guest, Debbie Myers from SK CAC industries and employment services. Debbie, so happy to have you here today.

 

Debbie Meyers  00:24

Thank you, David, I appreciate you taking the time to introduce gak to the world.

 

Damon Pistulka  00:31

Yeah, it’s, it’s awesome. I mean, because there’s not many times that I get to talk about. businesses, nonprofits, whatever you talk about that are helping people with disabilities like you guys do. And I really wanted to be able to highlight the great work, you’re doing a in the local Kent community, and then for others outside the community.

Hopefully, in those people that don’t live in the area where you can potentially help them, they’re thinking about looking for those same places in their communities, then and where they could contribute at, or they could have a good symbiotic relationship with a business like yours. So let’s start a little bit with First of all, with SK ca C’s background, he kind of tell me, you know, how did they get started? Who thought it up? What was going on? Oh, thank

 

Debbie Meyers  01:23

you. Well, and thanks for having me. And so I will tell you that I’ve been with fat for a long time. And, and so I tell the history before me, but Scott’s been in business as a nonprofit, since 1967. So I’ve been here that long, but I’ve been here quite a while. And so I feel like I’ve grown up through through the changes at staff.

But in 1967, families came together, their adult children had graduated from the public school system, and didn’t know what they would do as adults, but they had some skills and they wanted to figure out, was there a date program or work or something that people can do? And so, stack started as South King County activity center, because this group of parents came together, formed the nonprofit and said, you know, what can our kids do? And they started out with activities of daily living, you know, learning to ride the bus doing things, you know, that you would want to learn to be in the community.

But right away, they got a contract to do to clean and read tip, headsets for Northwest Airlines. And so people my age might remember what, what those headsets look like, yeah, where younger people have not a clue. But yeah, it used to just be a tube, plastic tube, with rubber chips on the end that you put in and the you know, the sound traveled through the tube, yeah, plugged in on the airlines. And so we cleaned every tip those for 25 years, as our biggest contract with Northwest Airlines.

And so right away, you know, families, of course, weren’t as involved in in the process then, and, you know, hired an executive director and, of course, had people running the program, but people were working people with severe disabilities were able to work and get good work, and work, you know, four to six hours a day and, and come to our facility, and learn to be employees, and then it so it was a training facility. And then we started to help people to get jobs in the community. And over the years, you know, now I’m fast forwarding, but over the years, you know, really have changed our focus and support people to work in businesses throughout our area.

And supported employment is the title for how we look at placing people in jobs with businesses that are willing to hire people with disabilities to do maybe not the full job description, but work with us to customize or figure out what helps their their business and then people are good employees. For that ongoing, we don’t go away after the placement. We stick around and we provide training, we provide the support that’s necessary. And we we stick with folks, and like I said, I fast forwarded through, you know, 50 some years. We also have continued To have a packaging and Assembly Facility, we no longer do the headsets for Northwest Airlines.

Actually, when when they started using electronic, you know, the wires would get so tangled that it was cheaper to make new ones than to have us clean them because we couldn’t untangle them. Yeah, yeah, went away. But we do other airline work for the catering companies for, for Alaska Airlines and others and, and, of course, that’s taken its toll during COVID. But we’re hoping to get that work back. But we still have a full packaging and assembly facility located in Kent. And, and we do local work. But we also do work for companies in North Carolina and Florida and other places that drop ship to us and we fulfill their orders.

 

Damon Pistulka  05:57

Yeah, yeah, well, we’ll talk about that a little bit. Because I think that’s, that’s really important to give people a good idea, the breadth and the types of work that you can really help them with. Because in because you have a facility, I mean, you give a business, a lot of options if they want employees on site in there. And they would like to look at a customized job description or customizing the opportunity for your employees so that your employees can be successful, and they can be successful.

That’s one way you serve, and help people. But the second way is because you have the facility, people can either bring product to you, and you can do light assembly, like light manufacturing kind of things, or, you know, those types of things. And I’ll let you explain it better than I. But those are the two kinds of ways that you’re you’re helping people get their with their job opportunities. Correct.

 

06:53

Okay, so

 

Debbie Meyers  06:54

yes, we, we still do employ people with disabilities in our own manufacturing and, and facility, but our focus our nonprofit, mission based focus is to help people to find jobs in the community in other businesses.

 

Damon Pistulka  07:15

Okay. Okay, really good. Really good. So what are some of the businesses where you see the most success for placing employees? Where have you had the most success? Overall? Is there a type of business? Is there? You know, or have you seen it across the board? Or where have you seen your best success?

 

Debbie Meyers  07:33

No. So, you know, I will tell you, for for many years, there were limited opportunities for people with, especially people with severe disabilities, that end, you know, ended up, I would, I don’t want to say that because it’s valuable work, and people work hard.

And, but we ended up, you know, doing a lot of janitorial work, doing, you know, grounds maintenance kinds of work, those kinds of things, a lot of grocery stores, that kind of thing, which is all very good work. And we so appreciate that we have people working in safe ways. And, and admire and, and we have people that sweep out our, our stadiums here in Seattle, for the Seahawks and salary schemes, and, and it’s good work, people sweep during the games, you know, so that, those are all good opportunities.

We also have people that really wanted to work in other types of businesses and manufacturing and offices, we have people working, you know, doing office work, and a variety of opportunities, we have one man who has very limited physical ability that works solely from home, using his computer to actually communicate and to be a policy coordinator, or, or an advocate advocacy group for the state of law. So, you know, it really runs the gamut of Yeah, just like you and your neighbors or people that, you know, we all work in different fields, and we look for those opportunities in every business.

Lots of people working at Amazon right now, but those are physical jobs that, you know, I will say for for some of our older job seekers, you know, physically, you know, it’s just like me, would I am not probably gonna have packages, as well as I did, you know, 20 years ago. Yeah, me, too. Continue on that spectrum with people as they have worked, maybe at a grocery store for 15 years, and now they’re ready to do something different and they They want to, you know, work in a movie theater. You know, I, it’s been to what we, you know, any business that’s ready to talk to us, we’re ready to help them to figure out where people can work and what they can do.

 

Damon Pistulka  10:16

Well, this is so interesting, because we were talking before we got on, and you said that, for people with disabilities, it’s about a 70% unemployment rate. Right. And so if that’s the case, and everybody under the sun has a we’re hiring sign in their window. Now, this is something that that could be an untapped resource that people really should be listening, or should be considering.

Because let’s face it, restaurants can open on days, grocery stores, I heard that what the heck was someone’s saying some about a six flags location wasn’t going to be open couple days a week because of this. I mean, come on, let’s let’s let’s be smart here. If we have if we have a workforce that’s ready, able and willing, but we just have to put a little work into it. It’s, it’s well worth

 

Debbie Meyers  11:09

  1. Even I so appreciate you saying that. Because I think businesses, you know, we hear a lot about, you know, we to have trouble hiring. And you think about this untapped resource that, you know, in every state, in the United States, there’s a vocational rehabilitation state agency, it’s mandated from the federal government, every employer could reach out to their vocational rehabilitation in the state of Washington is the Department of vocational rehabilitation and find out where to find organizations like scat to, to hook them up with people with disabilities for. So

 

Damon Pistulka  11:59

yeah, because as you’re talking about this, I mean, what you’re what you’re really doing, and you said, Before, we got on a couple things, and I want to bring us up, I’m gonna call some businesses out here, because I think there’s a lot of stuff that gets talked about, but people with disabilities get left behind, because you mentioned this, and this really hit home to me and says, we talk about inclusion, we talked about diversity, we talked about all these people should have rights, everybody should have rights.

But who talks about the people with disabilities, we don’t hear that, we don’t hear that. And we need to be listening to that, we need to be thinking about that. Because as we were just discussing, if they’re 70% unemployment in in a group of people that could help your business out, and you want to be more inclusive, you want more diversity, this is a great way to do it. And like, like you said, it, it may it will require some work, more than likely to customize the job description for this person to be able to have, have them do the work and do an effective job.

And, and but, again, in a lot of places, this means either being able to be open and do something you need to do to make money or not. And if you have employees that are and we were talking about this before we were on if you haven’t employees, or a group of employees that are overworked, what have you re re engineered what they’re doing to help hire some people with disabilities to assist in whatever way it was appropriate to offload some work from them to be able to do more with the people you had.

I mean, it just it makes zero sense to me that your door and your phones aren’t lining up and your emails not filling up with people all over the Kent Valley, if anyone wants to know where skcc ACA is, it’s in Kent, Washington. And there there are, you know, literally as we’ve already gone on with three miles and within three miles of your facility, I’m sure there are 1000 job openings, that that your people that you’re trying to help find gainful employment.

Employers want good employees, if they were if they were able to come to you and work together, you could you could probably fill all the people that you have that would would be able to that you would want to place would be in in places of employment. So I need to take you with me when I go out on the pavement. No, I just I tell you, there’s there’s some of the stuff that just a it makes me crazy. I mean, I it makes me crazy. I last a couple days ago I had a gentleman on the show that that entrepreneur does a business he he’s an apple.

He buys and sells Apple devices buys them refurbished used ones refurbishes them And resells them or upgrades and that kind of thing. And we were talking about underserved children. And because one of his philanthropic causes is he gives away, he upgrades devices and people can send him their devices rather than selling them the device, they can say, Okay, here’s my iPad, I don’t want it anymore, refurbish it and give it to somebody. And he’s got a whole process. I mean, I get passionate about this stuff, because we’re sitting here today, we’re sitting here today. We can hire people, everybody under the sun.

I mean, how many people do you talk to a day I talked to a day? All my friends talk to anybody in business? They say we can’t hire people can’t our people, but we’re not looking at people disabilities. And I mean, your urine Can’t they can help you. There’s like you said, call the vocational rehabilitation department in Washington State. They could get them at the local races. I know, there’s people north, there’s people south, there’s feefo. East, there’s, there’s places to go to find people to help, because that is how you can solve some of your labor problems. Yeah,

 

Debbie Meyers  16:09

I think, I think really, if businesses, you know, and we need to get that word out there, and I appreciate you, you know, taking this platform to do that, because really, employer, employers are in a tough spot right now. Yeah. And we can’t get to everyone to help them out. But, you know, if they start knowing that these resources are out there, and that there are people that actually want to go to work, and are ready to work, and have supports that come with them, yeah, make it pretty easy.

We, we help develop the job, we help support the person to do with the training, and we stick around as long as the employer feels like we really need to be there to help the person to be successful. And a lot of times, that’s a while, but you know, sometimes it’s rather quick. I told you about someone I was with last night, but you know, she was doing fine. But in diverse ships, so yeah.

 

Damon Pistulka  17:10

Yeah. And that’s the thing. I think that that the the hesitation or the unknown factor in it. I mean, we have to get that dispel that, because you’re there with your people out there helping those employees be successful in those businesses until the employer is comfortable with that situation. And that’s something that I mean, you don’t get that with somebody else you hire off the street. And and it’s, it’s, I just think it’s, I think it’s a win win. I look at what you’re able to do in the community. I mean, the how many, how many people have you helped to place this is just one, how many people have you helped to place you think over the time that you’ve been in as kcac?

 

Debbie Meyers  17:56

Oh, my gosh, well as probably know, the statistics to be on a show like this. But, you know, we have about 125 people right now currently in is actively either job seeking or in jobs. And, and, you know, I’ve been with scat for 14 years. Let’s Yeah. So in that time, you know, I, I’ve seen a lot of people be successful. You know, I we’re still working with some people that have actually retired, we have a small retirement program as well to help people to stay connected or done working. And they, we connect them to the senior centers and other activity.

I wish I would have known about your guy with the Apple products at donations, we, during COVID really had a difficult time reaching a lot of our participants, and wanted to continue with job seeking at least, you know, building resumes and doing activities to, you know, for people to be ready to work when when COVID was over. And so we ended up buying several Chromebooks for people to be able to people didn’t have devices.

Yeah, of course, we found out even in, you know, where we’re at near Seattle, and you know, these areas that people didn’t have internet access. So, you know, it would have been cool to connect with him. But now people are getting back to work and given me back the the Chromebooks I’ll have a little pile of Chromebooks.

 

Damon Pistulka  19:33

There you go. There you go. Well, I think so. So you’ve been at this for more than more than a week or so. And what what really brings you back every day. What why is it that you just love I mean, cuz honestly, you gotta love it to be there. Be there a bit over a week, like yeah,

 

Debbie Meyers  19:55

yeah, yeah. You know, um, it really is the people And, and the people that, you know, people in their families and to see know what it what families go through in supporting their child their, you know, adult child to just be included in, in our communities just like everyone else. And, you know, when I first came to stack, I, you know, I was fresh out of college I was, you know, I was just going to get some experience and move on whatever. You always think, you know, when you’re when you know, everything, and I got here and I, you know, I just saw the potential in people and the businesses that we work with, and, and just saw that we could do more for more people.

And I’ve always wanted to do more. And I think that, you know, we continue to, to evolve, you know, just like any, you know, we used to do on site, everyone was segregated here at our facility. But that was a step right, it was a stepping stone to you know, the the community where people are now working in Amazon and city of Canton Dukes chowder house, and, you know, a lot of pizza in all the places where people work and are successful.

And, you know, that, that just keeps me going every day. And and just what you were saying is, there’s so many employers that just don’t know, the resource, or you know, that there’s people with disabilities that want to work there good employees show up, you know, you hear that, too, that, you know, employers have trouble finding people that will show up the next day, let alone, you know, yeah, on time, and next week, you know, the biggest trouble our folks have about showing up is transportation. So if they have limited transportation, we work with them on that as well.

For the most part, a job seeker with stack is going to have the support to show up the next day and the next day, and they’re going to keep going. Even through the pandemic, we had people, you know, essential workers, Amazon, Safeway, all the different essential workers, we were there, they were there.

 

Damon Pistulka  22:28

Awesome. Awesome. So inside your facility, now, I want to I want to highlight what you guys do there too, because I think that’s a real opportunity that many manufacturers in area don’t understand or, or don’t consider, because, okay, say they don’t really have the opportunity to put someone to work from scac that’s, that’s looking at that stuff. And, and, but they might have an opportunity to offload some work into your facility that does the same thing by doing that.

So what are some of the kinds of things that you guys do in the facility there that, that we could share with the folks today? Yeah, so we do all types of packaging, assembly and fulfillment. We specialize in sort of some of the main manual packaging and assembly, or labeling things that you, you know, we start out sometimes with small businesses that, you know, people have been putting stuff together in their dining room or their garage, and they go a little bigger, and we take all those projects and get that work out the door for them.

But then, we also work with large manufacturers, and there’s a piece of something that they do that they just need it done, you know, through whether it’s kidding, or, you know, wire harvesting, you know, there’s some work we do on drain hoses, that it’s this one little coupling that has to, you know, be put on the end that a machine can’t do and, you know, those kinds of things are good with no, we’re good to do those, but we also do a lot of shrink wrap, we have some large productive shrink wrap machine that that one person can operate and run a lot of work grew we we also do a lot with box manufacturers putting you know, cardboard bundles together those kinds of things.

So, you can think of kidding and and and then fulfilling orders you know, the order the materials are drop shipped to us and then we can fulfill orders for are there customers and so it’s really a variety, but we have kind of that little, you know, groove that we’re in that we can, can do the some some of the manual things that that, you know, a person to do.

Yeah, yeah, no, it’s, I understand what you’re saying, hey, I’ve been in facilities like yours. And I think that’s it’s a very a very valuable thing. I mean, we used to, I can remember years ago, and some of the companies I ran, I mean, when we weren’t in an area where we could do this, we were actually at employees would take home stuff and, you know, take these five things that have to go into a bag together, or you got a bundle two or three things together.

And, and it’s really, what you can do is you can take those five things that can be put together just like you want, and it could be set in the package alongside the rest of the stuff like that they shipped to you too. And then like you said, it’s palletized and goes off to a distribution center. And and away you go. And you even mentioned to that, because of the location near the Seattle port, you guys have things that come in from offshore, repackage that as well.

 

Debbie Meyers  26:23

Right, we we received for a company in North Carolina, we receive their cargo through here, and then, you know, then all that, you know, they just, everything’s just in boxes on the containers, and then we palletized label and perfect for there to distribute here and in the okay. Yeah,

 

Damon Pistulka  26:51

yeah. Yeah. To be on this side, and you know, that we do that. Yeah. And then and that’s, that brings up a good good other point that I just thought of, as you said, though, I know a lot of manufacturers are our products are made offshore, and say I’m going to be putting these things in an FBA kind of location with Amazon, and they may not quite be labeled, right. That might be a good thing where you put the right barcode labels on them.

So they can be received by the the Amazon FBA locations across the United States. I know that’s a big in some of the clients, e commerce clients I had that was, it was quite a process to actually, if you’re to get your supply chain changed over and your packaging change correctly, and sometimes it’s not the option for the person buying the product, because it may be sold to 17 different companies around the globe. But you still can’t get your packaging or your products into an Amazon FBA location without the right UPC code. So yeah,

 

Debbie Meyers  27:54

a lot of that kind of rework, you know, is sort of how it looks when it comes, you know, or it’s even to the point where the customer needs it to have 12. But we just did a good job not too long ago, that was 12 little cards within this folder that was inside of a party in a box. But they put 10. You know, what do you do then? Right, you got to start fresh and just took, you know, two months to come across the wire. And so they hired us to open those boxes, put two more cards in those those boxes, palletized label and get them back out? And yeah, we’re able to do you know, rather than start fresh? Yeah. Yeah, so those kind of rework things are great for us as well.

 

Damon Pistulka  28:49

Yeah, that’s awesome. Because it’s, these are just great examples, I think of how you’re helping companies stretch their labor further, be an extension of their labor that really gives them more capacity, and also pretty much saves their bacon in some cases, because, you know, like you said, you’d have to start all the way over and that might take two months to get it here where you you’re able to rework it and, and, and get it out to the customer like they need. So

 

Debbie Meyers  29:19

outsourcing during this time when when businesses are having a hard time finding employees, outsourcing is definitely an option that we can can help with.

 

Damon Pistulka  29:30

Yes, yes, that’s for sure. And so if if people are just listening now I’m talking with Debbie Meyers from SK CAC, industries and employment services in Kent Washington on make sure everybody knows where it’s at. Because if you are looking for employees, the SK CAC will help you. provide opportunities for people with disabilities in your business or there may be work that you want them To complete as part of your business, I can help your employees do more inside your company.

So I think that I want to just say one more time again, there is a 70% unemployment, in the population of people with disabilities, I think it’s a wonderful opportunity for people to take the initiative to work with someone like you guys to customize the job duties, or look at what you can do in your facility to help the company produce more do get achieve their goals, because the job market is not going to change anytime soon.

I mean, we’re not produced, we’re not producing more people somehow magically coming to fulfill all these jobs. I mean, it’s gonna it’s going over time, we’ll figure out what we’re gonna do. But this is a good solid long term solution. And like you said, You You are there helping the employ? The the employee, he, with the training, making sure they’re successful in those businesses, and you work with the employer until the employer is comfortable that that employee is going to be able to handle their their job duties successfully?

 

Debbie Meyers  31:15

Yeah, that’s, that’s what we that’s what we do. And there’s no charge to the individual job seeker, or the employer. Yeah, it is. It is supported by our, our state and county funds.

 

Damon Pistulka  31:29

Nice.

 

Debbie Meyers  31:30

Alright. Is is to help people to be employees and to become taxpayers. And, you know, it all works out. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

 

Damon Pistulka  31:44

Yeah, yeah. It’s, I mean, it’s, it’s incredible, really, because, listen, you’re, you’re helping people, and you’re helping businesses, and you’re doing a great thing for the community. I mean, because if resources weren’t available for you, at least them, the people that you can help find opportunities are in those opportunities, they probably wouldn’t be or otherwise.

So even though you want to help more today, you’ve helped an awful lot already. That’s the one thing I say, because we look at all We aren’t doing enough. But we sometimes these guys say we’ve done a lot and that and be thankful for that and move forward and try to do better. But I do have one question for you that I think you’re probably not going to think that I would ask you if you had one, no limits.

What What would you really like to see for S kcac be able to do? No Limits? Yeah, I just, I mean, yeah, good question. I mean, is it Do you think that, you know, we look at all these companies I look at where, you know, in the northwest here, we have companies that spend billions of dollars, whether it be in I won’t say it’s you, I’ll use the word questionable stuff, tell him it’s kind of frivolous, whatever you want to say.

I have to say that if you had someone, you know, was to donate 10 million, you probably could do a bit of good with that. So let’s just think about, you know, why would you build out the facility that’s, that’s more inclusive, to be able to help people be more productive? What were the kinds of things? Or would you? I mean, what if you had in your mind could just imagine something? What would it be?

 

Debbie Meyers  33:34

You know, and maybe it’s a campaign or something along those lines, but I really just, if it was a limited to just be able to open every door and every business, right? Yeah, one person with a disability, to have an opportunity. Every business has an opportunity. however small, however large, whatever kind of work, there’s an opportunity for someone with a disability that we could hope to figure out. And, and yeah, I mean, you know, with with a bunch of money, I suppose we could throw more money at that.

But really, it’s those doors have to open. We Yeah, we just have to be able to be let in. And, you know, we’re a friend to business. But it’s hard to get past HR to get past the front desk or to call and, you know, it’s just hard. And it shouldn’t be that hard. I think it should be easier than that. Yeah, really know what, what you do what we do and it’s, it’s, it is maybe different. You know, people my age and older didn’t even get to go to school with people with disability, right? Yeah, yes. So school, so but people younger than me. They’ve had They’ve been in public schools that are included, you know, they’ve included people with disabilities.

They, it’s not scary. It’s what we as human beings should care about each other. And yeah, I’m just and I’m not asking businesses to do anything that hurts their bottom line. Yeah, this actually helps their bottom line. Yeah, there’s evidence that people coming in, in a customized supported position with our, you know, through our programs, not just our programs, but similar programs. You know, it helps morale, it helps other people kind of step up and say, well, gosh, if someone so can do that, and, and, well, he’s got some challenges, but he’s here every day, he’s doing this now.

And it sort of helps everyone to feel that way. And sometimes we do things. What wouldn’t, in our world is, you know, and in manufacturing is sometimes is the universal design of things. That something we put in place, maybe color coding, or organizing something a little differently for success of a person that we’re supporting, helps everybody that everybody knows where it goes, and everyone starts to do it the same way. So, you know, there’s, there’s real advantages, we just opening those doors?

 

Damon Pistulka  36:27

Yeah. Well, that’s super cool, because we did not rehearse what you just said. And I think it’s, I think it’s, I just thought it would be interesting to hear what you said, and what you said, the biggest thing if you had Nolan’s could do would be people just to open the door to talk to you. Now, if anyone’s listening, I don’t know why you wouldn’t at least do that. Because opening the door, once again, it could hurt it could help you.

That’s all it could. So I think that what if we can do anything today we can bring awareness to the fact that there’s resources like SK CAC, helping people with disabilities find gainful employment in businesses all over the Kanto area, and through the vocational rehabilitation centers across the United States, you have these resources in your area that you should be utilizing if you aren’t today, because if you’re setting complaint about you don’t have employees, you may not have a reason to if you visit one of these places, and started working with people and really looking at your business and how it could be more inclusive of people with disabilities.

Because again, 70% unemployment and in groups with disabilities, the employment problems aren’t going to go away tomorrow. And you could be finding an untapped resources for employees. And I know that is kind of a panacea for a lot of employers if they can find untapped resources. Because if I would ask the same question, if you had no limits, what what would you do today, to a lot of business owners say I would have all the employees I need, that’s all I need.

Right? And we’re giving them that that opportunity to maybe find a few of those and maybe get a little closer to that goal. So that was a that was a really long answer to your great answer to my question. That’s all I’m saying. Because I just want people to understand it’s just open the door and talk to you guys, or reach out to s kcac. In can’t, you know, go to the website, sk CAC calm, or org, it’ll get you there either way. And you know, give them a call. And it’s, it’s something that that you will be very surprised as to how the process works, how beneficial it can be for your business.

 

Debbie Meyers  38:56

So for Damon, I should probably say to keep my job as the executive director of a nonprofit organization that if anyone has a million or so to just drop on my doorstep, I’m good. We are willing to take it.

 

Damon Pistulka  39:10

Yes, you do take donations it is. Yeah, yeah, you are a nonprofit organization, because that that would only help you to further your cause and to be able to help more people. And I think that that too is you know, if people do want to donate, I think it’s a great idea to do that. And I do though, for the law as well.

For the long term success of the people with disabilities. I just hope that people listening and anyone that’s just holding the door, open the door and start talking. So are there there, I won’t put people on the spot like that. I was gonna ask if there’s any people at any companies you need to do you know, that we would like to open the door for but I don’t want to go publicly and do that. Yeah, I should,

 

Debbie Meyers  39:56

but actually are talking with some really old Companies that are local to our area that, you know, really want to do something and, and are figuring it out within their organizations. And, you know, I so appreciate that. Because it’s not easy sometimes with bigger companies that have to figure out HR, and if there’s a union or you know, whatever there, but we can figure it out, we just have to talk about it usually, and, and be willing to, you know, work together to figure it out so that companies can, can include people with disabilities. Yeah,

 

Damon Pistulka  40:40

yeah, I think I think you’re 100% right, and really is just taking a fresh look at things and, and figuring out what makes the most sense for everyone involved. And I’ll guarantee a couple things is that if, if you can bring some people in with disabilities to do that work, and the businesses are more successful, because of it, they’ll never regret that decision.

And otherwise, you can sit here and try to hire people like we hear the the horror stories of, of the signing bonuses and everything else to get people that don’t show up the next day. So well, it’s been so awesome to have you here today, Debbie, I’m just I’m just I’m, I’m so glad we got to do this because I love the cause I love the fact that you’re putting people to work and and allowing them to giving him a the assistance First of all, but be taking the time and and really working with them and their employers to make sure it’s a successful outcome for everyone. So

 

Debbie Meyers  41:48

I thank you helping us with our message. It really, it really takes all of us to care. And I appreciate you.

 

Damon Pistulka  41:56

Oh, thank you. I just I wanted to make sure we could do what we could. And so if anyone wants to talk to Debbie s kcac. industries and Employment Services can’t Washington, s kcac.org or com either one, it’ll get you there. Give them a call, talk to them about it, they will come to your facility, they’ll talk to you about the positions you’re thinking about. You’ll work with them to customize the job descriptions to help be inclusive of people with disabilities. And you can maybe put some put those employment or employee recruiting problems behind you.

So so if we do that just with two people, and that’d be cool. It would be it’d be awesome. So I just want to say thanks again, Debbie, so much for being on on here today. Thanks everyone for listening to the faces business today. I just appreciate your support. I so grateful that you listen to me banter on with with great guests and try to stumble my way through it and share their story. But thanks so much, everyone. We will be back again next week with more great guests talking about more interesting topics. I hope so. Thank you.

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