Recruiting youth with disabilities
Abstract
Recruiting youth with disabilities to volunteer requires a year-round effort involving a variety of techniques. Youth Volunteer Corps of America partnered with Mitsubishi, Inc. and the University of Kansas to create a guidebook to assist organizations with recruiting and engaging youth with disabilities in community service. Youth Volunteer Corps: Training Manual for Working with Youth Volunteers Who Have Disabilities was designed by youth, youth development professionals and persons with disabilities. The effective practice includes outreach strategies, potential challenges and ways to assess your organization's readiness to recruit youth with disabilities.Issue
Youth with disabilities are frequently overlooked as providers of service, and have not been encouraged or given the opportunity to serve. Developing a strategy to recruit these individuals requires some knowledge of where to turn to reach them.Action
Handling the Recruitment and Application Process
Youth volunteer recruitment is most effective when it is a year-round effort involving a variety of techniques designed to reach a diverse group of youth. Use of many different approaches will yield the most success since not all interested young people can be reached by any single method.
Schools are the most obvious source for recruiting youth volunteers. To conduct targeted recruitment, contact organizations that work with the youth you hope to involve in your program.
Check your organization's regular placement procedures for consistency with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Most youth volunteer organizations have an application process; the applications should not ask about disabilities. If a disability prevents a potential volunteer from filling out the application or going through the recruitment process, provide assistance or allow the person to take the application home to be returned at a later date. These types of actions indicate a willingness to provide reasonable accommodations.
Outreach Strategies
Your recruitment message, regardless of the media used, should make clear to potential youth volunteers the goals of your organization and the agencies and clients your volunteers serve. It should include information about the service activities that are available. Most importantly, let potential volunteers know that the organization you represent is looking for interested, dedicated, and talented young individuals willing to contribute their time and energy to the volunteer process. Your recruitment message should explicitly state that the organization is committed to placing individuals into the volunteer setting which best matches their interests with the needs of the organization.
If your outreach strategies have primarily concentrated on creating posters to hang within various organizations, consider making the information available in alternate media formats, such as Braille, large print, and/or audiotape. This will significantly broaden your audience and strengthen the organization's message that it is interested and committed to incorporating youth with disabilities in community service. Your outreach materials will further convey this message by incorporating quotes, pictures, or descriptions of young people with disabilities engaged in volunteer projects.
The following organizations can be resources for reaching youth with disabilities:
- Independent Living Centers are storefront operations that offer services to individuals with disabilities designed to aid them in maintaining or increasing their independence.
- State vocational rehabilitation agencies provide planning, training, and placement in career paths. The youth that visit these organizations are actively seeking to expand their professional options.
- School is where young people spend most of their time. In addition to hanging posters and fliers, which can be handed directly to students, you can also invite speakers to talk with students about community service and answer any questions they may have about the program.
- A large number of national and local organizations focus on issues related to specific disability groups. Many communities have one or more local or regional chapters of such organizations that can be valuable resources in reaching young people interested in community involvement.
Potential Challenges
- For youth with disabilities, transportation problems go beyond whether the individual is of driving age or has access to a vehicle. Youth who use a wheelchair for mobility and do not have their own vehicles require access to a vehicle equipped to accommodate wheelchairs. For those young people who don't require special adaptive equipment for transportation, it may be helpful to facilitate the arrangement of car pools or ride shares.
- It is not always obvious what accommodations are most appropriate for a given person or situation. Often, the best source of knowledge is the individual needing the accommodation. However, this is not always the case; sometimes there are effective accommodations the individual does not know about. There are many organizations whose function is to know what accommodations are the most appropriate and affordable in specific situations.
- Many people have not been in situations where they meet, much less get to know, individuals who have a disability. When they do meet a person with a disability, their first inclination may be to focus on the disability rather than the person. People with disabilities should not be labeled by their disabilities. Service program staff can work with all youth to foster more positive attitudes and reduce misunderstandings, and work toward facilitating good relations and working environments in which youth with disabilities are a part.
- Organizations that place youth with non-profit agencies must beware of tokenism. Young people with disabilities engage in service to gain real, valuable experience and skills, and to contribute to their communities. It is essential that they be given real work.
Assessing Your Organization's Strengths and Weaknesses
Periodically review the current state of and future plans for accessibility at your organization. Volunteer Youth Corps of America recommends an assessment tool using the acronym, "SOAP."
S=Subjective: What program participants, recipients, policy makers, and funding agents express about the program in their own words.
O=Objective: Observations from staff members about what constitutes the positive or negative elements of the program. These need to be stated in terms that can be measured.
A=Assessment: The strengths and weaknesses of the program, according to professionals associated with the program.
P=Plan: What plan of action will be tried or developed to remedy organizational weaknesses or further enhance organizational strengths? In addition, what evaluation system must be developed to follow up on the plan's progress?
Use the following acrostic to help remind you of the several key ingredients for SUCCESS.
SEARCH for youth volunteers with disabilities in life pathways where these individuals are active.
UNDERSTAND what it is like to have a disability. Be supportive and considerate. Don't show special preference, but have expectations of your volunteers with disabilities that are similar to those you would have of any youth volunteers.
CAPTURE the moment! Use both positive and negative situations that occur with youth volunteers with disabilities during a community service activity as opportunities for reflection and learning.
CULTIVATE and encourage relationships between youth volunteers with and without disabilities.
EVALUATE your recruitment efforts, and the accessibility of your site and program to see if you can fully involve young volunteers with disabilities into all of your service activities.
SEEK opportunities for developing leadership and mentoring connections for your youth with disabilities.
SELECT emerging youth leaders, regardless of their ability, to serve as role models for youth with disabilities.
As we seek to further integrate youth with disabilities into the volunteer network, it is important to make sure that sponsoring agencies are aware of any special needs that exist. They must also be willing and able to accommodate and embrace the diversity of these young people. Close coordination among directors, staff, and diverse community resources is critical to the success of each service project. It will be necessary to include specific sensitivity readiness during your training sessions with the agencies and adult volunteers to help ensure the success of these community service projects.
A careful match of the individual's personal resources with the demands of the job enhances the probability of success. Personal resources fit into the following categories:
- Physical abilities
- Mental abilities
- Personal qualities (character strengths and values)
- Interpersonal abilities (able to reach out to others, to work with and help them)
- Specific skills and talents: technical, artistic, domestic, and practical
Context
This manual was developed to provide Youth Volunteer Corps affiliates with a background on disability issues to integrate all volunteers, regardless of ability, into Youth Volunteer Corps. It was made possible through funding from the Mitsubishi Electric Foundation and the Dole Foundation.Citation
White, Glen W., Katherine Froehlich, and Veronica Knight. Youth Volunteer Corps: Training Manual for Working with Youth Volunteers Who Have Disabilities. Youth Volunteer Corps of America, 2000.Outcome
Many individuals with disabilities are successful in their professional lives. Still, national statistics reveal that over two thirds of people with disabilities are unemployed, and the average income for an adult with a disability is below the federally defined poverty level. The reality is that people with disabilities who are working and successful in their jobs are not readily visible as role models for youth with disabilities. Involving individuals with disabilities in community service is a relatively recent idea, and presently their representation is small. Involving youth with disabilities in your organization increases visibility of role models for other youth.Posted On
September 13, 2001Resources
Youth Volunteer Corps: Training Manual for Working with Youth Volunteers Who Have Disabilities, can be purchased from the Youth Volunteer Corps for $10.00 (plus shipping and handling). Call Veronica Knight at 1-888-828-9822.Source Documents
Related Practices
Related sites
Institute for Community Inclusion
The Life Span Institute at the University of Kansas