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For The Able Trust, our “year” ends June 30, so as we turn our eyes toward a new year starting in just a couple weeks, I want to take a moment to reflect back over the last 12 months.
We started our year by wrapping up our “Listening Sessions” that spanned the State and our stakeholder groups: persons with disabilities; employment service providers; and employers. We learned a lot from those sessions that directly impacted the course of our work during the year and into the new year starting July 1. They also allowed us to reconnect with long-time partners and develop new relationships.
As always, October was full of activities celebrating Disability Employment Awareness Month, including a first ever for us, a theme: “A Cup of Ambition.” Our hope was that a fun and catchy theme would encourage employers and partners to really participate in DEAM. For employers, to get them to think about fostering that culture of inclusion in the workplace. For providers, to take a moment to celebrate their successes with clients becoming employed. Many of you snapped a pic of yourself with a cup of coffee and tagged us on social media. Thank you, and we hope you’ll join us again this year! The Able Trust continued to support the celebration and the movement through focused and valuable webinars, an in-person training session with employment management expert Bill Santos, and a memorable DEAM celebration at the end of the month in Jacksonville. We will continue with our coffee theme this year and have already begun planning.
Throughout the fall and into the winter, teams from a record-high 19 High School High Tech (HSHT) sites let their entrepreneurial spirit guide them and participated in our annual Project Venture competition. We were once again blown away by the creativity, poise and talent of our students. We look forward to next year’s competition which will end in early spring 2024 in Jacksonville.
You may have seen one of our staff over the course of the year as we all traversed the State speaking to different groups, making presentations, attending conferences and everything in between. In total we spoke at or attended over 50 such events throughout Florida. Our outreach efforts led to some pretty amazing opportunities for The Able Trust, most notably our relationship with Visit Orlando and being named the Magical Dining Partner of the year and with CareSource and participating in their grant challenge. We were so excited to see many of you all participating in the challenge as well, and several of you winning!
As partners, you all contribute so much to the mission of expanding disability employment across Florida. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for all you do.
Let's make 2023-24 an even better year together!
Joey D'Souza
Vice President, External Engagement
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