Guilford High School (GHS) educators Keri Climie and Tara Beatty have just opened a new facility focused on community interactions to provide training and experience for young adults with disabilities. Their new facility at 116 Whitfield Street, Sound Life Connections (SLC), is now open and assisting young adults wishing to transition into the workforce, hoping to turn the site into a working business soon.

The colleagues have worked together in the Guilford school system for more than 15 years. Beatty is a special education instructor, and Climie is a speech/language pathologist. They have undertaken previous school program collaborations beginning at the elementary level up through high school, so this project is one they have a unique passion and skill set for, according to the pair.

Beatty said their idea of a young adult facility geared toward employment and life-skill development has been percolating with the two colleagues for many years.

“We have always talked about doing something privately, outside of school, so once we got up to the high school, we really liked the age group of young adults, and then we saw there was a huge need,” Beatty said.

According to Beatty, the two have worked on vocational training at the high school previously but felt there was still a gap in available services for young adults, especially post-graduation. The non-profit they created to fill this lack developed rather quickly, Beatty said.

“There are a lot more services available for younger kids, but with this age group, those start to drop off as they get older outside of school,” Beatty said. “We started about a year ago, just sort of dabbling in it. We had a couple of kids that we worked with over the summer, and we did some cooking classes with some kids at one of the churches. We kind of carried that through the school year, and then in the springtime, we decided we wanted to move to a non-profit model and to really ramp it up. When this space became available, we took the lead and said we’re going to make it happen. It was such a great space in terms of being handicap accessible, and just left like being down toward the green would bond us with the community.”

According to Climie, they began securing non-profit status in April. The organization quickly implemented its programming and has been providing courses and instruction all summer, according to Climie, including social activities, with classes being offered both during the day and evening.

Climie said the ultimate goal is to turn the site into a working gelato shop that will provide students with invaluable vocational and life skill development and a home base that will foster these young adults to succeed and thrive.

“This would provide a training place for those skills and also be able to keep it as a social spot and a point of collaboration with the entire community,” Beatty said. “The social and vocational aspects are what we know to be the two biggest things areas, in speaking with various agencies and organizations and working both of those is our mission. Providing the instructional piece of it, but also provide the opportunity for the social aspect as well.”

“They really need those connections,” said Climie. “That’s one of the biggest things that we noticed with our young adults, is that they need to feel connected whether with friends, doing a job, doing a life skill. When they feel safe and connected, they obviously feel happier.

Climie said the pair’s unique background in following one group of students as they advanced through their entire school experience provided unique insight into exactly what these young adults require in order to connect with their communities.

“We are fortunate that we have been able to watch kids grow and see what skills are necessary along that whole expansion of childhood into adolescence and then young adulthood and beyond,” Climie said. “So, we are trying to really hone in on what’s important, and like Tara [Beatty] said, in talking to these agencies and focusing on those two key factors, being gainfully employed and having social connections are what we strive to do.”

According to the educators, their ultimate model would be training their students for work not only at the café, when it is up and running but also collaborating with area businesses to help develop workers for their individual needs. Classes have already begun, and the hope is the café will be open sometime around the first of the year.

“We really want to be the next step of continuing services beyond public schools,” Beatty said. “We really want to be able to provide that vocational piece. 80% of people with disabilities are unemployed, and we want to make this an inclusive town. The public schools here are very inclusive; Guilford especially has a very big connection to that. They have a great peer program, but when they graduate, those peers most often leave and we want to bring that connection to the next level and carry that through.”

Climie said the partnerships they hope to create with area merchants are crucial to the organization’s mission.

“This is lifelong. This is not something that kids will get tutoring in or therapy in for a limited time. This is lifelong for families. This is an investment in forever. So, we want to make it accessible for families,” said Climie. “We definitely don’t want people sitting home that could be here. And not just our café, we want other merchants to see, ‘Hey, your students do a great job with that skill at your place; we have something they could do here.’ We want this to spread to other businesses.”

The pair laud other organizations such as SARAH and Vista Life which both offer similar programming, but state the need is great and SLC will hopefully become another bridge to the community.

“There’s nothing like this close by in terms of having a hands-on training facility. There are others in the state that are providing a similar model but there’s nothing right here, so this would be a first in this community to be a hands-on, open-to-the-public training facility. That’s where they are going to learn all those skills,” said Beatty. “How to communicate with people, how to introduce themselves, how to greet the public. We don’t necessarily want everybody to be gelato servers forever; we want to teach those skills so they can go out in the community, problem-solving and find what it is they are good at and be able to match them up with the needs of the community.”

Climie added, “The biggest thing is that these young adults will come and work, and they feel good about what they’re doing. They go home feeling like they contributed to the community as a whole. It is a win-win for everybody.”

Anyone wishing to find out more information for students, to donate, or for partnership inquiries can contact Sound Life Connections at www.soundlifeconnections.org.