We’re excited to be working with the Growing Hope Project in the San Bernadino City Unified School District. Growing Hope is creating engaging educational experiences and workforce development through food and technology. As part of a Farm 2 School Friday event, we recorded a live Q&A that will be edited and shown to students next year. Check out our reel on Instagram.
virtual events
DD Awareness Month 2022
We have a tremendous amount of respect for the National Association of Councils on Developmental Disabilities (NACDD). The organization has been a champion of Hearts of Glass and its outreach campaign.
Each March, the NACDD and their partners participate in a Developmental Disabilities Awareness Month (DDAM) Campaign.
The campaign seeks to raise awareness about the inclusion of people with developmental disabilities in all facets of community life, as well as awareness of the barriers that people with disabilities still sometimes face in connecting to the communities in which they live.
We took the energy of DDAM into virtual and hybrid events with:
- St. Norbert College’s Normal Miller Center for Peace, Justice & Public Understanding
- Network of the National Library of Medicine’s All of Us Community Engagement Center
- The Arc of Bartholomew County, Indiana
- Futures Explored
- PayPal and their disability-focused employee resource group, Thrive
Stay tuned for more exciting announcements about our work with PayPal.
A Year of Impact & Engagement
20 STATES | 30 EVENTS
100 ATTENDEE AVERAGE / EVENT
Our Hearts of Glass virtual events are maximizing our impact with a lighter footprint and greater accessibility than in-person events.
The cherry on top? Our Vertical Harvest speakers don’t have to miss days of work to participate on panels.
A November to Remember
It’s rewarding working with community colleges. They play a critical role in workforce development across the nation. McHenry County College, located in the Chicago area, provides academic programming and skills training to prepare students for jobs or to transfer to four-year colleges and universities. Their Hearts of Glass event, coordinated by the Center for Agrarian Learning and Access and Disability Services, featured an in-person screening.
We have also been doing more programs in the corporate world with employee resource groups or ERGs. Crystal Baker, Lead Accessibility Solutions Engineer and President of AT&T’s Ability Resource Group, noted that our programming encourages people not to treat disabilities and accessibility as an afterthought.
NDEAM Event-Apalooza!
“The theme for National Disability Employment Awareness Month (NDEAM) 2021, ‘America’s Recovery: Powered by Inclusion’ reflects the importance of ensuring that people with disabilities have full access to employment and community involvement during the national recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.” – Office of Disability Employment Policy
We averaged two Hearts of Glass events a week throughout October. We worked with small liberal arts colleges, big state universities, nonprofits and state agencies to catalyze conversations about inclusion inside and outside of the workplace. Twelve different Vertical Harvest employees participated in panel discussions with a few speaking at multiple virtual events. They all shared valuable insights about challenges and opportunities during the pandemic.
Hello, Upper Midwest and Mountain West Neighbors!
North Dakota and Colorado both have a lot in common with Wyoming, so it felt like working with old friends in September.
The University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities at Minot State brought together a terrific group of collaborators – North Dakota State Council on Developmental Disabilities, North Dakota Protection & Advocacy and Advocates Leading their Lives.
The Executive Director of Alliance, an association dedicated to strengthening community services and supports for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, told us “The [Hearts of Glass] film and panel discussion were the highlight” of their conference.
We worked with another Colorado nonprofit in September. Developmental Pathways serves individuals with developmental disabilities/delays and their families in southeast Denver. Rachel Walker, Community Partnerships Manager, loved that the programming spoke to both employers and employees.
