Share Your Employment Stories

December 6, 2013

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

We are pleased to present an exciting opportunity to work with us here at Autism NOW. We are in the process of developing a toolkit about the employment of individuals with autism and other developmental disabilities. This toolkit will be geared towards employers and others who work with or are thinking of hiring an individual with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).  The purpose of this toolkit is to help inform employers, co-workers and others about what needs to be done for individuals with ASD and other developmental disabilities to have a workplace that treats all of its employees the same regardless of disability. It will be created by self-advocates, parents of individuals with ASD, and others working with individuals with ASD.  This toolkit will consist of 17 topics related to employment. Each category will consist of:

a) Information related to the topic

b) Personal stories from self-advocates about their employment experiences and their     recommendations to employers

c) Exercises for the employer to use in order to learn more about the topic or to see what they need to do in order to make the employment experience worthwhile for both the employer and the employee

d) Resources for the employer to learn more about the topic

We are inviting you as a self-advocate to share your story with us about your employment experiences. We also welcome submissions from parents who wish share their child’s employment experiences. We will work with you to select a topic and send you specific questions to use as a basis for writing your story. The story should be about 1 to 1 ½ pages long, double spaced, and sent via e-mail to us here at the Autism NOW Center. Please note that this is a volunteer opportunity and writers will not be compensated for their work. Please let us know if you or someone you know is interested in this opportunity as we are looking to share as many stories as we can through this toolkit.

If we accept your story, we will work with you to edit it appropriately to fit our needs before publishing. We will not use your name, any real names of people, or places of employment or employers’ names in the story.

If you have any questions or want more information about this opportunity, please e-mail me at [email protected] .

Thanks,

Amy Goodman, Co-Director Autism Now Center