Ready & Abled

A group of Fortune 500s, along with local disability organizations, met today in Windsor, Conn., for a leadership boot camp to examine ways to employ more people with disabilities. The backdrop: Walgreens distribution center in Windsor, which is designed to employ 30% people with disabilities.

Companies attending the boot camp included Walgreens, Ernst & Young, Proctor & Gamble, Clarks Corporation, ESPN, Aetna and Traveler’s Insurance. They shared best practices around training and employing people with disabilities in order to get ready for the next-generation workforce, and also toured the Walgreens campus.

Walgreens is a leader in hiring people across the spectrum of disabilities. Its distribution centers – where goods are packaged and then shipped out to retail stores – employ many people with disabilities. Windsor is one of the discount chain’s highest producing distribution centers in the U.S. (The top ranking goes to its Anderson, S.C., center, where 40 percent of workers have a disability such as cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, autism and traumatic brain injury.

Randy Lewis, senior vice president of distribution and logistics for Walgreens, has a son with autism, and he says having a child with a disability has changed his perspective on the employment landscape for people with disabilities. “If my son is like 95 percent of the other kids out there with autism, he’ll never be offered a job,” he says.

Walgreens goal is to hire 1,000 people with disabilities at its centers by 2010 (there are nearly 700 in Anderson) and 2,000 by 2018.

The companies were also joined by several organizations including the Connecticut Bureau of Rehabilitation Services and the U.S. Business Leadership Network.

At the popular Mystic Aquarium in Mystic, Conn., two new programs are helping kids and teens with learning and developmental disorders learn social skills to help them navigate school and beyond.

In Social Species from the Sea to Me, teens encounter a variety of marine animals with varying social behaviors at the aquarium, hear about typical job requirements for high school graduates and learn about the importance of social skills to job market success. They also meet aquarium managers and retail, catering, education, security and maintenance staff while practicing the skills necessary to gain a job in their fields of interest. The program also covers transition planning from high school to a job, interviewing, hygiene, self-promoting skills and completing applications.

Led by Waterford-based Synergy Center Corporation, the programs are designed to give kids “a fun, naturally relaxing, non-school environment, where [they're] exposed to a variety of social settings,” says Synergy Center president Brian Armstrong. The first session of Social Species from the Sea to Me begins on March 17 and costs $480.

Additionally, the Synergy Socials Program is open to children ages 5 to 9 with disabilities such as autism, attention deficit disorder, Rett syndrome, intellectual disabilities or those who may simply have difficulty getting along with other children. Each class begins with yoga or another hands-on sensory experience, such as a touch-and-learn session with some of the aquarium’s invertebrates, which helps the students focus and release anxiety. says Dr. Stephen M. Coan, president and CEO of Sea Research Foundation, a non-profit organization that runs Mystic Aquarium’s educational programs. “These activities are all designed to help build social skills, such as proper greetings, turn taking, following directions and appropriate play interactions,” he adds.

Mystic Aquarium members receive a 10% discount on these programs.