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 Education – especially career education – took center stage at the Spring-Ford Chamber of Commerce’s monthly breakfast meeting, held recently at the Western Center for Technical Studies, Limerick.
Even before the breakfast began, the assembled business people heard from Lisa Harner of KenCrest EmployNet, which offers employment services for people with disabilities.
KenCrest was founded in 1905 by a group of Lutheran deaconesses. They purchased Rivercrest in Upper Providence Township in 1910 to serve as a tuberculosis sanitarium. In 1955 the mission changed to focus on people with disabilities, and in 1970 the name changed to KenCrest. Today, KenCrest serves 6200 people in southeastern Pennsylvania and Delaware.
EmployNet provides a variety of services to enable the disabled to work. The agency operates two facilities which offer job training as well as paid opportunities for the clients to learn social and work skills. At Fellowship Farm in Sanatoga, clients receive training in horticulture and even sales.
At KenCrest Company in Pottstown, workers in the production center complete subcontract piece-work for area businesses. They collate mailings, burn cds and perform other small assembly jobs.
The company’s Adult Training Facility provides services for people with physical challenges, as well as mental retardation, Harner explained. They learn a craft – papermaking from recycled office paper to make gift items and cards – and have the opportunity for additional support in the facility’s Sensory Room and VTree a virtual reality program.
EmployNet also provides community-based services. In the supported employment program, the staff works with job candidates to match them with suitable openings at local businesses. EmployNet provides career planning, job training, transportation training and social skill support for the client, as well as working with the employer.
In alternative services, participants can serve in volunteer capacities and visit local businesses. EmployNet also provides school-to-work transition services for developmentally disabled individuals who are preparing to graduate from high school.
Following a delicious and bountiful breakfast buffet prepared by the Western Center’s culinary arts students, the chamber members learned about another school-to-work initiative, the Montgomery County Education and Workforce Partnership.
Paul Woodman, school to work coordinator at the Western Center, introduced Pam Slauch to speak about the partnership. The program “partners businesses with education and particularly with students,” he remarked.
Slauch explained that the program serves as an intermediary, bringing schools and students together with businesses. Currently it works with 10 high schools and technical schools throughout Montgomery County, as well as 80 businesses.
The focus is on job shadowing and internships, she explained, adding that the program’s goal is to enable students to job shadow as many careers as possible. If students have even the slightest interest in a potential career, the program tries to give them an opportunity to shadow that job, so the teens get a better idea of whether that career is right for them.
The program also offers educator-in-the-workplace opportunities, where teachers work in a local business, then develop lesson plans based on their experience.
Slauch encouraged the chamber members to visit the program’s website, www.montcopa.org/careerbank, to learn how they can get involved.
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