ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Creating a safe place to learn valuable job skills — that’s what one program is doing for the special needs community. The Arc Ontario and Wayne-Finger Lakes BOCES have partnered to open a coffee shop at the Orchard Cafe in Newark.

Coffee’s how Jolene Webster’s been starting her days for more than a month since the cafe’s opening.

“Don’t like when it’s black. Black is blah,” Webster giggled.

“The opportunity that we have here with Wayne Finger Lakes Boces allows our jet program, job exploration and training. Have the training here at the Orchard Cafe, and they're learning those skills to move into supportive employment and then hopefully, maybe even get a job or obtain employment with our social enterprises of North Star Cafe, who is also helping us out with the coffee and some of the items here,” said Kristen Lankton, manager of prevocational programs at The Arc Ontario.

What You Need To Know

  • The Arc Ontario and Wayne-Finger Lakes BOCES are partnering to open a coffee shop for vocational training and hands-on employment experience for individuals with disabilities

  • The initiative aims to teach the special needs community the soft and hard skills they'll need in their future careers

  • Jolene Webster has enjoyed the experience since the shops opening last month 

Twice a week, the cafe opens for building employees for individuals with developmental disabilities to learn skills they may need for their future careers.

“Not only are they learning how to make coffee, but they're working on their communication skills. So they're making that customer service part of their training. They're working with money, with the register. They balance the books, they do inventory, they learn their baking skills with the muffins and the bagels and making the coffee. So we also focus on safety skills while in the workplace, as well as those hard and soft transferable skills that they can really use, not only in this kind of field, but other fields as well,” Lankton explained.

“I have learned how to smile at the customers when they come in. And I have also learned how to take the customer's order,” Webster explained. “It’s been nervousness for me when I started here before because I didn’t really know anything, but now that I’m getting to know it better, I’m getting to be able to see the customers. I’m getting to be able to take their orders and make their orders the way they want it to make them feel like they’d like to come here more often.”

Learning these sorts of soft and hard skills in a working environment can be challenging for the special needs communities. Webster says it’s been difficult to find a job in the past.

“When we had COVID before, no jobs were open, no programs out here were open. And I kept thinking to myself, I was asking myself, I'm like, 'am I ever going to get into a program out here? When is Covid going to stop?' So that way I can be able to get into a program,” Webster said. “When I first started here, I started to doubt myself in the past, but now I'm ... I'm over me, doubting myself. I'm over me bringing myself down. I'm over me having to tell myself, 'No, you're not getting into this job.' Because now look at me. I'm into this kind of program. I love this kind of program, and I want to stay in this kind of program.”

“It is very challenging because a lot of businesses, you know, they want to bring on people and they want to hire people that have experience and come in and walk in the door and just go to their job and it seems like these days it's hard to find people that have the training within the businesses that maybe might take our folks a little bit longer to get to speed. So this allows us to get them to that speed, so then they can go to apply for the jobs and get the jobs and be right, able to walk in the door and know, 'oh, I know how to run that register,' or 'oh, I know how to bake muffins so they don't have to learn it.' Once they get to the business, they already know it, and they can come into that business with some experience on their resumes.”

A program aimed to equip participants with essential job skills to enhance their independence and future employment prospects proved successful for Webster as she hops into her dream job.

“I'd also like to be able to be a person that works in a coffee shop to help people out with their coffees,” she admitted.

The best part is, she gets to work with her new friends.

“It makes me feel like I'm walking on air,” Webster smiled. “Now look at me. I’m where I want to be.”