Career Journeys is an Oregon-based program that enables email-based mentoring between young people with disabilities and folks with disabilities who are established in their careers. At a recent Board meeting, the OBLN Board approved becoming a Collaborator with Career Journeys, and will encourage OBLN Affiliates to become involved with it. One of the best ways to do so, is to make sure that your employees with disabilities are aware of the program and encouraged to become mentors.

In this context, this issue of our newsletter highlights Career Journeys and explores the experiences of two participants.

Salem area employers are coming together for their first OBLN Employer Breakfast on August 2nd. 20 local employers including Kaiser Permanente, ODOT, Washington Federal Savings, ABC Window Cleaning, Rapid Ink Refill, and the Department of Justice are gathering at the Salem Conference Center to participate in a "Power Workshop" on disability awareness and new adaptive technology. Following the workshop, the OBLN Board is sponsoring a business panel discussing disability in the workplace and hold an organizational meeting to plan for a Salem Chapter of the OBLN. The Salem Chapter will host employer brown bag forums and best practice sharing around Hiring, Retention, Recruitment and Return to work for people with disabilities. They also will help business learn new ways of serving the growing number of customers with disabilities.

"This is an exciting opportunity for Salem business," say Bill Kemp of Precision Castparts Corporation, and OBLN Board sponsor for Chapter Development. "20% of the American workforce now has a disability. Oregon's economy can't afford to overlook the talent represented by these workers. The OBLN is our only business forum devoted to discussion and best practice sharing around these issues."

Oregon’s Career Journeys program is a truly innovative opportunity for youth with disabilities. It is the brainchild of Jo-Ann Sowers, PhD. Jo-Ann is a Research Professor at Portland State University. According to Jo-Ann, “Many youth and young adults with disabilities have low career aspirations because they have not had the opportunity to learn about a wide array of careers and do not have role models and mentors of people with disabilities who work in a wide array of careers. This is the purpose of Career Journeys. We are using an E-Mentoring approach so that we can have mentors from across each state and the country. In addition, one of the primary challenges of mentoring programs is finding mentors who have the time to meet in-person with youth on a regular basis. Through E-Mentoring, the mentors can easily communicate with mentees via their home and/or work computers.” Portland State University, through a grant from the U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) is providing training, consultation and funding to enable Diversity Initiatives, a private, nonprofit community-based organization in Portland, to implement the Oregon Career Journeys program. Through this grant, PSU is also working with an organization in Houston, Texas to implement the Career Journeys programs, and will be expanding the program to more states in the future.

Through Career Journeys, participants (mentees) can scan the profiles of professionals with disabilities who represent a wide variety of career paths. Mentees can then contact selected mentors though the program’s “metagram center” (a system for monitored email messages) to find out more about their professions and their career-related experiences.

The folks at Career Journeys welcomed our interest in their program and helped us to set up interviews with two people who are actively involved in it – one as a mentor and one as a mentee. Their comments are very helpful in understanding how valuable the program can be.
 

Anna Richardson is one of the Career Journey mentees. A student with disabilities, Anna was introduced to the program about a year before her graduation date. Anna was more than helpful in sharing her Career Journeys experience with us.

OBLN: Anna, how did you hear about Career Journeys and what interested you in the program?

ANNA RICHARDSON: A friend told me about the program. I wanted to find a job and career. I wanted to know about different careers… to help me figure what I wanted to do.

OBLN: Once you got involved with the program what happened?

ANNA RICHARDSON: I looked at the mentor profiles. The first mentor I contacted was an Advocate for people’s rights. I sent her an email and she told me about her career and how she got there. We have kept in touch once a week for about a year. She informed me about social work jobs and what you need for that.

OBLN: Great! Did you have contact with other Mentors with the Career Journeys program?

ANNA RICHARDSON: Yes, three more. They were all in different careers. They helped me to learn more about their jobs and careers. One of them was Chris. He uses technology in his work. It caught my interest because with technology you can do more with less ability. He is an inspiration to me that way.

OBLN: Are you still interested in a social work career?

ANNA RICHARDSON: Yes. I always help my friends out with their problems and I am just starting a job as a receptionist with a social service organization. It will be my first permanent paid job. Two years ago I graduated from high school since then I’ve been in a transition program through Portland Public Schools and I just graduated from that.

OBLN: Congratulations on your new job. How did you connect with the organization that hired you?

ANNA RICHARDSON: (Anna invited Clover Mow, the National Project Coordinator for Career Journeys, to respond to this question.) While Anna was working with Career Journeys she also got connected with a local One-Stop center and Vocational Rehabilitation. She told them about the kinds of careers she was interested in and the skills that she wanted to use. They assisted her with her job search and in getting the accommodations that she would need on the job.

Chris Miller is one of Anna’s important mentors. For four years Chris was a pilot with Horizon Air, Inc. Six years ago, a motorcycle accident left Chris paralyzed from the neck down. Horizon didn’t want to lose Chris’s talent or knowledge. As he recovered, they worked with Chris to find the accommodations that would need to instruct the airline’s new pilots. Now, as a Ground Instructor for flight Operations, Chris trains newly-hired pilots on regulations and systems knowledge of Horizon’s aircraft.

OBLN: How did you first hear about the Career Journeys project?

CHRIS MILLER: About two years ago, counselors visited me to assess my talents and my ability to overcome the physical barriers in my work environment, with the support of my employer. They were interested in me and the mentorship that I could possibly provide to some people who might have similar physical disabilities - or those who might be interested in the aviation industry.

OBLN: You have been involved as a Mentor with Anna. Can you tell us about that experience?

CHRIS MILLER: A little over a year ago, Anna contacted me through Career Journeys. She was attracted to my particular Mentor profile because of her interest in the aviation industry and in the way I had overcome the physical barriers of my job. She was interested in the kinds of resources that I was using and how she might get involved in the industry herself. That led to numerous communications on the kind of equipment that I use. She was ever so interested in those things. Initially our contact was bi-monthly. Eventually, she visited me to meet me and see the kind of work that I do.

All or our initial contact was through email. Correspondence is through an email process on the Career Journeys website. Our emails to each other are processed through a counselor - who participated in the conversations as well. There is a Mentor guidebook online that you can download that has strict protective rules to be followed by the correspondents so that communications don’t wander into a “pen pal” kind of relationship – that it is directed to the Mentoring and fostering of an educational relationship.

I learned a lot too. It wasn’t just a one-way street. It was an informational pairing between the two of us. I also learned some things from her that might make it easier for me. Through these conversations, we were encouraging each other.

OBLN: So most of your correspondence with Anna was around careers in your industry and secondarily on the kinds of accommodations that have helped you to be successful at your job?

CHRIS MILLER: That’s right, but I’m an educator. That’s where a lot of my focus was – not just on my industry. Anna was interested more in what I do – rather than who I am or who I work for. If she wants to be an educator, she can be an educator in any kind of business – with the same set of skills and technologies.

OBLN: Have you had other Mentoring relationships?

CHRIS MILLER: There was one other contact from a mentee, he was employed and loved his job and the people he worked with but he was interested in my industry. I wrote him back but I never heard from him again and nothing further evolved with this mentee.

OBLN: Chris, do you have any final comments that you would like to make?

CHRIS MILLER: I believe that the program is successful. I would encourage people that I know out there in the field who have disabilities to get involved and make their resources available to these youth. My biggest thing is technology. I am only six years out from this injury and I am a productive citizen in this world. I attribute a lot of my success to my employer, the training that they provided, and funding from Vocational Rehabilitation. I am now full of this knowledge. I’d love to share it with people like Anna or any other individuals that might correspond with me through Career Journeys.

The constructive relationships that Anna and Chris described are what are at the heart of Oregon’s Career Journeys program. While many of those stories are untold, they are evidenced in the budding career journeys of young mentees who have been informed, inspired and encouraged by their Career Journeys’ mentors.

SHRM, the Society for Human Resource Management published a very informative article in the March 2005 issue of their publication: HRMagazine. Written by Robert J. Grossman, It is a very readable and no-nonsense analysis of the emerging workforce availability issues that face businesses in America. Several times over, it encourages companies to take a harder look at their utilization of workers with disabilities. The following excerpts from the article are used with permission of HR Magazine, published by the Society for Human Resource Management, Alexandria, Va. (All rights reserved.)

“To visualize what the relative decline in the skilled labor force will mean for employers, think of the total universe of applicants as a multilayer cake where the top layer represents the best applicants and the bottom layer the worst...As the cake becomes smaller (relative to demand)—which it soon will—each layer becomes smaller. So, while the total number of applicants will exceed the total number of available jobs, the number of top-layer, skilled employees will shrink, spurring greater competition for these most qualified workers—and even for the less skilled individuals below them.” “The real gap, then, involves selected skills, not head counts. The question is not whether there will be enough workers, but whether there will be enough qualified workers on U.S. soil to do the work at an acceptable cost.”

“…there is a large pool of labor that employers have, to this point, been reticent to tap—and that doesn’t show up in BLS labor force projections. Those who have become so discouraged that they have stopped looking for work, for example, aren’t reflected in BLS labor projections. Neither are skilled individuals with disabilities or those, such as parents or older individuals, who are willing to work, but only on a flexible or part-time schedule.”

“Invest in older workers. As the baby-boom generation ages, the number of people in the labor force aged 55 to 64 will grow by 51 percent, more than four times the average for all age groups. The number of workers aged 65 and over also is expected to grow by 51 percent. “Folks who may have been marginalized in your organization, or at least think they have, will have options other than retirement,” says Tom Casey, a principal in HR and IS at Mellon Financial in Boston. “What are you planning to do to hold on to them and their knowledge?”

“Employers also may need to broaden diversity initiatives to include the potential treasure trove of workers who have withdrawn from the workforce and are not included in the unemployment statistics. Many have significant skills and education and want to work, says Robert Walker, president of Get America Working, a nonpartisan employment policy group in Arlington, Va... According to BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics), in addition to the 8.2 million Americans who are officially unemployed, more than 75.7 million Americans of working age are not participating in the labor force. Another 24.2 million are part-timers who may be interested in boosting their hours. Among them: older workers who retired early, stay-at-home parents who would work if employers offered more family-friendly policies, discouraged workers who have given up looking for jobs and people with disabilities.”

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