[Iabs-talk] Internship Opportunity
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AZNOR99 at aol.com
Sun Jan 4 06:28:39 UTC 2009
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Article 1
2009 Summer Congressional and IT Internships for College Students with
Disabilities
NOTE: Application Deadline – JANUARY 9, 2009
The Mitsubishi Electric America Foundation and the American Association of
People with Disabilities (AAPD) are offering, for the fifth consecutive summer,
a congressional internship program for undergraduate students with
disabilities. The Mitsubishi Electric America Foundation-AAPD Congressional Internship
Program was created in 2002 to provide an opportunity for students with
disabilities to work on Capitol Hill for eight (8) weeks and acquire valuable work
experience that will enrich their academic studies. As congressional
interns, participants gain insight into congressional office operations, public
policy
development, and constituents' roles in the legislative and political
processes.
The 2009 Mitsubishi Electric America Foundation-AAPD Congressional
Internship Program is designed to:
Allow students with disabilities to obtain first-hand knowledge of the
legislative and political processes by working in congressional offices.
Enable students with disabilities to acquire valuable work experience that
will enhance their academic studies and career prospects.
Demonstrate to Members of Congress, their staff, and fellow interns the
talents that students with disabilities can bring to a professional work
environment.
Introduce students to members of the Washington disability policy community
and to national disability leaders through a series of seminars and special
events such as the anniversary observance of the passage of the Americans
with Disabilities Act (ADA).
Eligibility Congressional Internships: College students with any type of
disability are invited to apply. At the time of application, applicants must be
enrolled as Sophomores or Juniors. (They must have at least one more
academic semester to complete, at the end of the summer internship.) Applicants must
be U.S. citizens.
Article 2
For the sixth consecutive summer, Microsoft Corporation and the American
Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) are offering a summer internship
program designed specifically for college and university students with
disabilities interested in careers in information technology.
The Microsoft-AAPD Federal Information Technology (I.T.) Internship Program
was created in 2003 to provide undergraduate students with disabilities, who
have a demonstrated interest in I.T. careers, with the opportunity to
participate and benefit from highly sought-after federal internships. The internship
is made possible through a generous grant from Microsoft and will be
administered by AAPD. In 2009, this internship program will provide ten (10) students
with disabilities with the exclusive opportunity to participate in an eleven
(11) week I.T. internship at a federal agency in Washington, D.C.
The 2009 Microsoft-AAPD Federal I.T. Internship Program is designed to:
Enable students to gain work experience and further enhance employment
opportunities.
Enhance students' skills and interest in I.T. careers.
Increase placement in I.T. jobs for interns who complete the program.
Demonstrate to prospective employers that students with disabilities are
solid prospects for the I.T. workforce.
Introduce students to national disability leaders through a series of
seminars and special events such as the anniversary observance of the passage of the
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
Eligibility for IT Internships: Applicants must be college or university
students with disabilities, enrolled in an associate’s or bachelor’s degree
program,
when they begin the internship program. They must have completed at least
one semester of college credits at the time of the application. Applicants must
be U.S. citizens who are 18 years or older.
For questions, please contact AAPD at (800) 840-8844 (V/TTY) or email:
internship at aapd.com.
. Applications may be submitted electronically or via U.S. Postal Service,
and must be received by 5:00pm (Eastern Time) on Friday, January 9, 2009.
Article 3
Space Camp & Aviation Challenge For The Blind and Visually Impaired & The
Deaf and Hard of Hearing
Space Camp for Interested and Visually Impaired Students (SCIVIS) is a week
long camp that takes place at the US
Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
The SPACE CAMP and AVIATION CHALENGE programs specifically designed for
blind, visually-impaired, deaf
and/or hard-of-hearing attendees have attracted students from across the
United States and around the world.
Program highlights may include a presentation by blind and/or deaf NASA
professionals on career choices and
working in the space industry. Blind students also benefit from the latest
technology in the field, including tactile Braille
displays and synthetic speech for computers. SCIVIS is actually 4 separate
programs : Space Camp; Space
Academy; Advanced Academy focus on space travel and the Aviation Challenge
Program. For details about programs
for Visually Impaired Students, contact Dan Oates at (304)822-4883, or
E-mail:
scivis at atlanticbb.net /
To learn
more about the Deaf & Hard of Hearing Program, contact Amy Newland at (412)
371-7000, or E-mail:
Deafspacecamp at aol.com
or Visit the website at:
www.spacecamp.com
Article 4
Web Portal Aims to Find Jobs for the Disabled
NJBIZ.com, 12/15/2008
It’s a stubborn fact that the majority of working-age Americans with
disabilities can’t find a job, or enjoy the independence a paycheck delivers. But
New
Jersey-based GettingHired is hoping to change things with its just-launched
Web portal, a job-search database that encourages employers to pay an annual
fee to get their openings in front of this under-tapped talent pool.
Retired textile executive Tom Muscalino leads a Bedminster-based team that
has spent the past two years figuring out how to fully load a Web portal for
job hunting by people with disabilities.
The site, GettingHired.com, brings together employers, including Public
Service Enterprise Group, of Newark, and Summit-based Celgene, with advocates for
the disabled, including Easter Seals and Goodwill Industries.
Also signing on to the GettingHired.com community are service providers who
provide training, technology and other services that bridge the gap between
a disability and a job.
“We thought if we could provide a platform where all of these stakeholders
come together and join forces, we could potentially make a huge difference in
this unacceptably high rate of unemployment,” said Muscalino, chief
operating officer of GettingHired.
The site offers a video interview coaching program “that is totally
accessible, regardless of disability, type or severity,” Muscalino said. “If you are
blind, it turns everything into spoken word; if you’re deaf, it turns
everything into script.”
There’s also a 70-question career self-assessment to help applicants decide
which jobs are right for them, plus job-matching technology, volunteer mentors
and social networking. Everything at GettingHired.com is free to the job
seeker.
Applicants are not asked to identify their disability on their
GettingHired.com profile. “It is illegal for employers to inquire about an applicant’s
disability,”
Muscalino said. “Our portal is not about somebody’s disabilities, it’s
about their talents and backgrounds and interests.”
GettingHired.com was funded by private investors “who all have a personal
reason for wanting to help people with disabilities,” he said.
The company’s revenue will come from the employers, charged on a sliding
scale based on company size. Annual subscriptions range from $250 for firms with
10 or fewer employees, to $65,000 for firms with 75,000 or more workers.
Muscalino is the former president of the textile firm West Point Pepperell,
where he worked from 1973 to 1993; he then joined Dan River and retired as
president
of the towel and linens maker in 2005. Muscalino said when he was in the
corporate world, his companies had diversity programs for women and minorities,
“but it just never occurred to any of us that we should be also tapping into
this labor force.”
Employers will constantly post jobs on the site, because turnover creates
job openings even during a recession. Even companies that are considered “
extraordinarily
great places to work” will have annual turnover of 20 percent, Muscalino
said. So a firm with 20,000 employees might post as many as 4,000 jobs a year
on GettingHired.com
About 37 percent of adults, aged 21 to 64, with a disability are employed,
according to the 2007 Disability Status Report from Cornell University.
Hannah Rudstam of Cornell’s Employment and Disability Institute will be at
GettingHired on Jan. 7, presenting a four-hour workshop for business managers
and human resources people. The workshop will be co-led by the Garden State
Council of the Society for Human Resource Management.
“About 20 percent of the population has a disability, which means that 20
percent of an employer’s talent pool has a disability,” Rudstam said. “This is
a talent pool that faces tremendous barriers to being taken seriously as job
candidates.”
There are many job sites for the disabled, but GettingHired.com is unusual
in that “they have a foot in the disability and the business community,”
Rudstam
said. “They are surging ahead at making bridges that are difficult to make.”
Elaine Katz, vice president of grants and special initiatives at the Kessler
Foundation in West Orange, said GettingHired.com “is very good, it’s very
accessible
and it will benefit people with disabilities.” A Kessler grant funded the
Cornell program, which is aimed at getting employers and social service agencies
to collaborate in finding jobs for the disabled.
One of the site’s competitors is Accessible Employment, which runs a job
search site funded by a Kessler grant and developed by the New Jersey Chamber of
Commerce Foundation. Dana Egreczky, senior vice president for work force
development at the Chamber, said AccessibleEmployment.org was launched in August
2007 and, like GettingHired.com, is fully accessible.
“It is difficult for anyone to find a job right now, but it is especially
difficult for people who literally do not have the wherewithal to pound the
pavement,”
she said.
Leonard Schneider is executive director of Jewish Vocational Services in
East Orange, which provides training and job placement services to 750 people a
year, many of whom have disabilities. He’s not familiar with job-search Web
sites for the disabled, but instead provides one-on-one services to the agency
’s
clients.
“It’s the small and midsized companies that are hiring today, and we
approach them directly to identify job opportunities,” Schneider said. Jewish
Vocational
Services also has an on-site supervised workshop, where about 80 employees
with disabilities complete packaging and assembly work through contracts with
businesses. And the agency has received a Kessler Foundation grant to
develop home-based jobs for people with severe disabilities who can’t leave their
homes, but can use technology to perform call center jobs.
Brad Turner-Little, assistant vice president of government relations for
Easter Seals, is on the GettingHired advisory council. “Work force development
is a primary focus of Easter Seals, and there really is a crisis around the
employment of people with disabilities.”
He said GettingHired.com’s recruiting among employers is significant, “
because these companies are committing themselves to the disability population and
saying ‘we really want to tap this population.’ ”
Public Service Enterprise Group, the Newark-based utility, was one of the
first employers to subscribe to GettingHired, and has posted dozens of jobs.
Randi
Casey, director of talent acquisition, said, “Attracting talent is
increasingly important as the baby boomers retire. This is a great pool of talent that
we hope to tap into.
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