(From left) Jacob and Jordan, participants in The Next Move Program (Photo by Jay Paul)
In the corner of a classroom at the Midlothian Family YMCA, 17-year-old Sarah and instructor Elizabeth Howley are talking about movies. “Lilo & Stitch” is Sarah’s favorite, she says. Jordan, another student, stands beside the window a few feet away, listening. After casually taking a few steps toward them, he bursts in loudly: “Buddy the Elf, what’s your favorite color?” Everyone laughs.
Jordan, also 17, has just correctly demonstrated the wrong way to join a conversation.
The students are from Midlothian High School, and they’re participants in a nonprofit program called The Next Move Program, which offers guided internships for young adults with disabilities. Each student works in a different YMCA department for two hours a day and attends three hours of classroom instruction on topics such as workplace safety, résumé writing and interviewing.
When I arrived, each of the six students walked up and shook my hand, told me their name and what their internship job is. Sarah is assigned to child care, for example, and Jordan helps to clean the YMCA's swimming area and organize equipment there.
“We do a lot of practice on social skills,” says Howley, The Next Move Program’s executive director and co-founder. “Many folks [in the program] have intellectual disabilities or are on the autism spectrum.” The students learn their job duties quickly, she says. “Where they struggle are very small social cues or understanding what the expectations are for professionalism or time management — some of these workplace ‘soft skills’ that are going to be present in any sort of job, in any position and, really, in any industry.”
The Next Move Program founder Elizabeth Howley (right) laughs with participants Sarah and Kuttrell. (Photo by Jay Paul)
The need for programs like The Next Move is huge, she says, noting that nearly 22,000 special-needs students graduate from high schools in Virginia every year, and about 70 percent of young adults with disabilities are unemployed.
“When you look at poverty rates, 1 in 4 adults with a disability in Virginia is living at or below the poverty level,” Howley adds. “In the general population, it’s 1 in 10.”
As compelling as those numbers are, it wasn’t statistics that gave the program its start. It began because several executives at the former Health Diagnostic Laboratory (HDL) wanted job opportunities for family members with disabilities. Henrico County Public Schools initially ran HDL’s internship as a pilot project, Howley says.
“They brought in a group of students to work in one department, in the logistics department, and they quickly found that these individuals were great workers,” she says. “They took a great deal of pride in the work that they did. They were on time every day, with a smile on their face. And what people didn’t anticipate, too, is how much they would bond with the staff.”
The interns began to fill positions for which the company had previously hired temporary workers, and some eventually joined the staff.
While working at the front desk during his internship, Kuttrell has become more confident about greeting people and making eye contact, says Midlothian Family YMCA Executive Director Patricia Green. (Photo by Jay Paul)
Wanting more control over the program’s organization and management, HDL then decided to operate it in-house, and the company hired Howley and Mary Townley, both special education teachers in Chesterfield at the time, to run it. With about a dozen special-needs employees on staff, “they were running into issues like annual performance training and annual reviews,” Howley says.
She and Townley came on board in 2013 to support those employees and restart and expand the internship program. After HDL unraveled in 2015 amid a kickback scandal involving laboratory tests, Howley and Townley decided to spin the internship program off as a nonprofit. They established The Next Move Program that December and began to develop new business partnerships. Program tuition is $1,500 for six weeks; scholarships are available to help cover costs.
“We knew what we had done had worked, and we knew the value of it,” says Howley, who in April received the ChamberRVA HYPE (Helping Young Professionals Engage) program's Change Agent Award. On May 25, The Next Move Program plans to hold a fundraising event called capABLE RVA at the VCUarts Depot (814 W. Broad St., 5:30 to 8:30 p.m.), featuring portraits and stories of Richmond-area adults with a variety of disabilities. Proceeds will help fund scholarships. Starting June 3, the capABLE collection will be on view at the Virginia Historical Society as part of its Story of Virginia exhibition.
In addition to the YMCA, The Next Move is working with Wells Fargo and the University of Richmond. This summer, they’ll place interns in several locations in the downtown Arts and Cultural District: Quirk Hotel, Virginia Repertory Theatre, Central Virginia Legal Aid Society, Ledbury and The Renaissance events space. They’ll also partner with GRTC to give students experience using public transportation to get around.
With about two weeks left in the current session, Patricia Green, executive director of the Midlothian Family YMCA, says the experience has been rewarding for all involved. “We as a staff have been getting just as much out of it as they are.”
Justin Feaster (Photo by Tina Eshleman)
On the day I visited, Howley had invited Justin Feaster, a graduate of the program, to join the class. After participating in an internship with Howley and Townley at HDL, Feaster went on to attend Reynolds Community College, where he received a certificate on Friday for completing the two-year Program for Adults in Vocational Education (PAVE), for students with intellectual, physical, emotional and learning disabilities. He was asked to speak at the graduation ceremony.
As part of that program’s clerical track, Feaster became a program assistant with The Next Move, helping with office work while serving as an unofficial mentor to students in the program, offering them advice and guidance.
“It’s like looking at myself, kind of,” says Feaster, 23, recalling how he used to be teased about his speech disability. The internship at HDL helped give him the confidence to go out and meet people and to continue his education, he says. Feaster also credits strong family support.
“My parents uplifted me, saying, ‘You can do it, you can amount to anything,’ ” he says. His advice to students who’d like to follow in his footsteps? “Don’t be intimidated. I overcame it, and now I can testify, tell other people it doesn’t matter if you have a disability or not. You can overcome anything.”
Never miss a Sunday Story: Sign up for the newsletter, and we’ll drop a fresh read into your inbox at the start of each week. To keep up with the latest posts, search for the hashtag #SundayStory on Twitter and Facebook.
