How ABLE Programs Can Collaborate & Celebrate April as Financial Literacy and National Autism Awareness Month

Dear Colleagues: 

I’m sure that many of us can relate: understaffed offices, small budgets, and limited time and resources. How can we get it all done? While I’m sure there are many answers to this age-old question, today we are going to focus on collaboration.

As we are doing outreach work, we are often at events where everyone has the same goal: to help those with disabilities. While we all may have different ways of arriving at that goal, collaboration can help us all get to our goal faster. I often find that meeting and talking with the other vendors at events can be as or even more fruitful than the conversations I have with individual attendees. 

One great example of this is our collaboration with Autism Speaks. I was a vendor at an Autism Conference and while listening to the speakers, I thought that Josh with Autism Speaks really had some amazing insights and ideas to help integrate individuals with disabilities in the workplace. Even better yet, he was doing these things on a national level!  Knowing that ABLE programs as a whole are also working towards a goal of helping individuals with disabilities to gain meaningful employment, I thought a collaboration could help each of us get closer to our goals. I was sure to track him down when he finished speaking to see what he thought about collaborating with ABLE, and to hear what we could bring to the table, and he was all in!

Of course, I brought in ABLE today, as again, collaboration is a great way to get things done. ABLE today is the ultimate collaborator for all state ABLE plans, as they exist specifically to help increase the knowledge of ABLE plans across the United States. 

Through several meetings, Josh has informed us of courses they have developed to help human resources (HR), managers, and co-workers understand the ins and outs of working with an individual with a disability. These courses reach beyond individuals with Autism and can apply across several disabilities. We are currently working with Josh to add ABLE information to these courses. 

Tune in on Wed, April 24 at 1 PM CDT to the webinar we will be presenting in collaboration with Autism Speaks to hear about the great work done so far to increase the numbers of individuals with disabilities finding meaningful and exciting career opportunities. Be sure to also invite employers and work groups that you are collaborating with to make an even bigger impact! 

REGISTER TODAY 

See you then, 

Stacy Pfeifer
Assistant State Treasurer
Nebraska