Art Experience in Italy Crew!

This email was sent out yesterday to people who supported a group of talented artists experiencing Down Syndrome (Lupita Cano of Seattle, Clara Link of Tacoma, and Dylan Kuehl of Olympia) which traveled to Italy October 27-November 3, 2008 for the art experience of a lifetime. 

“The Art Experience in Italy crew thanks you!

Our group, with your support, had a personally and professionally poignant experience in Italy. We flew to Rome and traveled extremely well together. We had a lovely welcome dinner in Rome that first evening, and slept well. The next day, on an adventure to see the Pantheon, we were sidetracked by a 1.5 million student demonstration protesting recent cuts in education funding, which shut down Rome, but not us! We still made our train to Orvieto.

Once in the countryside, Luigi showed up with our van, and we traveled (me driving!) through the winding roads of the Italian countryside to Civita di Bagnoregio. We were welcomed to the town with open arms and a dinner cooked over a wood fire in a 3000 year old grotto/cave/restaurant by Maria and Sandro. Tony Costa Heywood our host joined us in the fantastic meal. The rest of our week consisted of grocery shopping in Bagnoregio at the butcher, the pasta maker (they made ravioli especially for us!), the bread maker, the fruit and veggie shop, and all the other old-town shops. We cooked and ate together in our houses in Civita, and ventured out to Orvieto and Todi for art and sightseeing experiences in the van.

The weather was volatile the night we arrived in Civita, a wicked but exciting lighting and thunderstorm passed over the town. We had fog, rain, hail, and ample sunlight overall. We experienced the many different moods of old Italy.Personally, we all experienced what it means to be artists in a land which celebrates its artists. Many conversations went long into the night, and during our meals together we forged a new understanding of what it means to support each other in our artistic pursuits. Everyone realized the importance of art in public experience, and we are all now even more fully dedicated to inspiring and supporting not only ourselves but others in the pursuit of exploration and self-expression!

We will be digesting the experience and creating new art in the next several months. We will be producing a video, a short book, and public presentations to share with you the poignancy of the experience. Stay tuned…

The Great Conference Theme Search!

That is right, WiSe is searching for the big idea for the 32nd Employment Conference in Ellensburg this June.  You can enter your idea by going here, and we have similar links on our main web page http://www.theinitiative.ws as well as the People Working Wiki http://peopleworking.wikispaces.com.  As you think about the theme for this year’s Conference, please let a few thoughts guide your creativity:

• Employment for people with developmental disabilities is our primary focus.
• Employers and employment success will be emphasized in this year’s conference.
• The Employment Conference connects diverse communities across the state under the banner of employment equity.
• We are looking for the conference theme or title, not a logo or artwork.

The entries will be evaluated an a winner chosen by December 19th, 2008.  Keep an eye on our Blog, web page, or the People Working Wiki for information about the 32nd Annual Employment Conference theme!  Click here to go to the survey.

Charity Guide

Charity Guide is a non-profit thats mission is to “inspire and facilitate flexible volunteerism”.  They currently have an article under the “How to Make a Difference in a Few Hours” section of thier website about hiring people with a developmental disability, written by Beth Hering.  You can take a look at the article yourself by going here.

Transition at U of Kansas

The Transition Coalition at the University of Kansas has a great web site, including the work-in-progress of 101 Transition ideas.

Shoreline People First

Karen Ritter is in the process of organizing a People First group in Shoreline, WA.  The first meeting will be on Wednesday, November 19th at 7:30 PM.  The meeting will be held at the Shoreline Spartan Recreation Center which is located behind the Shoreline Senior Center at 18560 1st Avenue NE.  This introductory meeting will be used to talk about “What People First is-  How we can work together to educate, advocate and celebrate ourselves and our communities”.  If you have questions about the meeting, you can contact Karen at 206-478-1899 or e-mail kritter@ambitions.org

Welcome to the WiSe Blog!

Today begins a new era for Supported Employment News on the WiSe Web Site.  Rather than building each news article on the webpage, I will be posting that information here.  Please subscribe to the RSS feed to keep up on all the news and information we run across.  This blog is open to other authors as well, so please feel free to post relevant and appropriate items that you may know of as well.

Puget Sound Business Journal

The Puget Sound Business Journal has a great article about Courtney Block and her employment with Starbucks!

“My Next Steps: A Parent’s Guide to Understanding Autism”

The Autism Center at the University of Washington has released a new resource DVD entitled “My Next Steps: A Parent’s Guide to Understanding Autism”.  For more information please visit the website

Local Olympian shines in TV commercial

Click on the link above to see the Wenatchee World article about Special Olympian Alex Darlington

First-of-Their-Kind Graduates

From News, Views and Careers for All of Higher Education

June 3

When Washington State’s Bellevue Community College hold its commencement a week from Friday, among the graduates will be the first four products of the two-year institution’s unusual degree program for students with learning and developmental disabilities.

Leah Brand, Bergen Delisi, Anna Harnois and Trent Marshall will receive associate of occupational and life skills degrees from the Venture Program at Bellevue, which houses the associate degree program.

Mary Allason, director of the Venture Program, said the curriculum serves students with a wide range of disabilities. Some have attention deficit disorder, others autism, she said. Some students suffer from seizures and others had heart issues at birth that led to problems later in life, she said.

In order to address the needs of all these students, class sizes are kept small. Allason said classes have no more than 16 students. “That helps the teacher to be able to cater on an individual level,” she said.

Another way the program caters to the needs of the students is that the course load is taught over a longer period of time, Allason said. The 90 credits required to complete the degree are taken over four years.

Fifty-three students are enrolled in the program, with 47 attending this quarter. Allason said it is not uncommon for students to take a break, especially if a student gets a job.

Harnois, who is 26, has attention deficit disorder. She says that along with her learning disabilities, it can sometimes take her longer to “catch on to things,” but said she’s done well from the help of “great teachers.” She said she is “absolutely thrilled” to be among the first to receive the degree.

For her internship, which is a required part of the degree program, she worked in a day care center, where her duties included: reading and playing with the kids, help put supplies and materials away and get them out, etc.

“Pretty much I just helped the teachers in any way they needed to be helped,” she said.

She said the experience gave her an idea of what it would be like to work at a daycare center. Right now, Harnois doesn’t have a job after graduation, but will be looking after she graduates. She said she might try to get another day care job.

“I’d like to go into the child care field,” she said.

� James Heggen