Workers with Disabilities: Talent for a Winning Team - January 2008
Javier S. and Oz M.: Demonstrating the Power of Mentoring Youth with Disabilities
Javier S. and Oswald "Oz" M. are role models for the power of mentoring. They first met several years ago through a program at Partners for Youth with Disabilities (PYD), and have remained in a mentoring relationship. Oz is vice president for human resources at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital Network, and Javier is a college student majoring in social work. Each has a congenital limb difference, and Javier has learned, among other things, strategies for overcoming barriers associated with his disability. Now working part-time at the hospital where Oz first mentored him, Javier is also passing on the gift he has received by mentoring a younger person with a disability.
Oz, whose job includes staffing various sites with skilled workers in an extremely competitive market, views mentoring as a business investment. "What better place for Javier to learn and gain exposure to his future career than in a hospital. Javier gains valuable experience. We gain a good trainee and, hopefully, a future employee," he says.
Mentoring is an important strategy for assisting youth in transitioning successfully into adulthood, but little information has been available on mentoring youth with disabilities, or career-focused mentoring in general. In 2003, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) awarded grants to a number of providers of mentoring services, including PYD, so that these providers could help build the capacity of small community and faith-based organizations to provide career-focused mentoring services to youth with disabilities. In 2006, PYD collaborated with ODEP to present the first national conference on mentoring for youth with disabilities. Through another grant program, the National Collaborative on Workforce and Disability for Youth, ODEP developed Paving the Way to Work: A Guide to Career-Focused Mentoring for Youth with Disabilities.
