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Leveling the Field
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Laurie Pare is the Director of the local NEBA Business Consulting Center. She can be contacted at laurie.pare@nebaworks.com
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Team supported self-employment
By Laurie Pare
The dream of owning one's business is shared by many Americans. Small business ownership represents the largest market segment of new and expanding employment options in the United States1.
There has been a 20 percent annual growth in the number of small businesses since 20012. However, business ownership is often not considered an option for people with disabilities. But with a team-supported approach, individuals with disabilities can be successful business owners and contribute to the economy as do many of their non-disabled counterparts.
People with disabilities who want to establish their own businesses can now receive support and assistance in the growth of their business through a model program with the New England Business Associates (NEBA) and its local Business Consulting Center. These innovative program teams disabled entrepreneurs with individuals who help them in the day-to-day operation of their business.
Removing Barriers
Self-employment provides the entrepreneur with the freedom and flexibility of an unstructured schedule that may be necessary to accommodate their disability, provides an opportunity to reduce or eliminate the need for benefits from the government, and allows individuals with disabilities to be seen as an equal competitor in the market place. Individuals learn to make decisions and choices each day in the start up and eventual running of their businesses. Once stigmatized as ungifted or untalented, entrepreneurs with disabilities can now benefit from small business ownership not only by sharing their talents, but also by learning new processes within their business structures. For some, this may mean self-discipline, for others, money management and the acquisition of many new business skills once left out of their life skills learning process.
Real Life Examples
The team-supported self-employment model offered by NEBA can change the employment service system for all individuals with disabilities. Here are but three
examples of people who have become small business owners with the help of NEBA and the local business consulting center. (Editor's Note: Only the clients' first names are used to preserve their anonymity.)
Mark is a motivational speaker. Using his business Go Voice for Choice, he speaks to developmentally disabled peers on self-advocacy and making healthy lifestyle choices. He has spoken nationally and recently spoke in Argentina. He and his team are in the process of putting together a ten-week seminar for the healthy lifestyle educational program. Mark intends for his business to be a non-profit.
Adam owns and operates Wilbraham Web-Design with more than a dozen clients, including Senator Gail Candaras. When he left school and could not find a job, he realized he was savvy with computers and that all businesses needed websites, so he decided to build a business and work from home which easily accommodates his life style.
Art worked for many years at a local cemetery where he acquired gardening and landscaping skills. When he terminated employment there and could not get another job, he decided to go on his own and launched Art's Gardens.
All three of these individuals are very capable in the actual performing of their main business functions, however, team support is necessary for the day-to-day operations such as marketing, bookkeeping, customer contact, transportation, etc. That's where mentors, advisors, NEBA and the local Business Consulting Center come into play.
The local NEBA Business Consulting Center is located in the Scibelli Enterprise Center Springfield, Massachusetts. It provides support for business owners with access to services as well as finding and training individual advisors and mentors that will provide the entrepreneurs and their teams with the necessary support and expertise that will ensure business sustainability.
These businesses, once self-sustaining, will then leave the NEBA BCC and seek space in the community alongside other businesses in Western Massachusetts. For more information about NEBA or details the roles of advisors or mentors, call 413-328.0932.
1. Making Self-Employment Work for People with Disabilities. Cary Griffin and David Hammis. Portland, OR: Book News, Inc.
2. www.census.gov/statab/www
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