CSWA, Mechanical Draftsman, Mechanical Designer, and Roaster Team Member at Not Your Average Joe coffee
Kyle, Jasmine, Rori, & myself went to the People w/ Disabilities Awareness Day event where we set up a booth for Not Your Average Joe (NYAJ) Coffee & told people about us. NYAJ advocates for & employs friends w/ intellectual, developmental, &/or mental disabilities. And we’re not new at doing this, we currently employ over 100 people w/ disabilities. We don’t hire them for meaningless jobs that we just made up, either. They create drinks (barista), make food (fresh burritos, sandwiches, etc.), they serve the food, the work in the warehouse pulling orders for our 6 locations, shelve product, bag coffee, etc. And we don’t pay them only a couple dollars, like government work programs, we pay them an ACTUAL wage! Myself, for example, was started out at $10.00/hr; if you know anything about me, I have a Massively Traumatic Brain Injury (MTBI). We don’t just give them orders over & over, we help them grow & develop critical thinking skills; we tell them to do something, & if THEY’RE not doing anything after they finish, we ask them something like “Is there something you could be doing?” or “Does *this* need to be done?” We’re all about helping them grow as people & we WANT them to grow! Schools do little more than babysit them, then don’t help them find a job(s) or anything when they graduate; essentially throwing them to the wolves. Instead of LETTING the wolves have them, we catch them when the school throws them away & we give them a place to start building a future! We hire adults who/ disabilities &, from schools that have work learning programs, we hire students 14 & older. When the students graduate, we just hire them straight up. NYAJ is a wonderful place, w/ even better people! We also roast our own coffee that’s actually quite good; we’ve tied the National Coffee Roasting Champions 2 years in a row! @timherbel @nyaj.coffee @thats.andi @lexi_raeann97 #coffee #nyaj #disabilityawareness #disabled #disabledadults #disabledpeople #coffeeshop #disabilityawarenessday #disabilityawarenessmonth
