Cherry Hill Café Helps Mentally Disabled Develop Job Skills
CHERRY HILL, NJ. (CBS) -- A local nonprofit that helps people with intellectual and developmental disabilities has found a unique way to help clients get the skills they need to get jobs.
Café ONE at Bancroft in Cherry Hill, New Jersey gives them the chance to learn job skills in the restaurant industry.
"It helps prepare them for working in the community, so they can learn real job skills and work on relevant social skills in sort of a safe environment," says Avi Glickman, Director of Adult Employment Services, "and they can generalize those skills at a local café or a Wawa, and it has been a phenomenal success."
Glickman says for many, the hardest part is just getting in the door.
"Sometimes people have some preconceived notions about the capabilities of the person with a certain kind of disability or diagnosis," he says, "either the manager or the employer may not have had much experience or exposure in that kind of thing in the workplace, so to build up a résumé is a great thing."
Glickman says workers get to make a video résumé showing them hard at work doing everything it takes to run a café.