[Njabs-talk] Internship Opportunity

[EVELYN E. VALDEZ]

Reminder: March 31, 2009 NFB scholarship dead line.  For information review the web site: www.nfb.org
 
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.