Jack McGuinness Participates in Business Roundtable on October 4th

In honor of October’s National Disability Employment Awareness Month (NDEAM), National Industries for the Blind (NIB), partnering with the U.S. AbilityOne Commission and Northern Virginia Community College (NVCC), cordially invite you to participate in a half day Business Roundtable Summit on Disability and Inclusion. Unemployment rates are decreasing for most Americans but there remains a significant gap for individuals who are blind or visually impaired seeking to find and retain employment compared with individuals who do not have disabilities.    

Challenges:  

  •  Specifically, recent data shows that only 42 percent of working adults with significant vision loss were employed (including part-time and full-time workers).

  • Approximately 187,500 blind or visually impaired working age adults were actively seeking employment.

 Source: Erickson, W., Lee, C., von Schrader, S. (2017). Disability Statistics from the American Community Survey (ACS). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Yang-Tan Institute (YTI). Retrieved from Cornell University Disability Statistics website:www.disabilitystatistics.org)

 Join NIB and other business partners in the Washington, DC area to exchange ideas and identify opportunities to equip individuals with the critical job-driven, in-demand credentials and skills matching the needs of employers looking to hire in a 21st Century labor market.  

 NIB will share best practices about hiring, training and empowering an underutilized employment pool – for individuals who are blind or visually impaired. Below is the link for you to register.

When:   Thursday, October 4, 2018

 Location:  Northern Virginia Community College, Brault Building, 4001 Wakefield Chapel Road, Annandale, VA

Program Schedule:   

  • General Session          9:00 a.m.  - 12:30 p.m.

  • Networking Lunch      12:30 p.m. - 1:30 p.m.

 As partners, we have an opportunity to begin a dialog intended to embrace and leverage the power of partnerships to identify innovative strategies for transforming the underemployment paradigm into a process that is responsive to workforce needs and sourcing qualified talent from an under represented community.

Jack McGuinness