How Project Search prepares young adults with intellectual disabilities for employment
Program offers a combination of classroom learning and on-the-job training
For young adults with intellectual disabilities, finding a job can be difficult. But a new program aims to give them a better chance at gainful employment in Toronto.
Project SEARCH is a combination of classroom learning and on-the-job training. Students spend class time learning everything from how to do job interviews, to how to conduct themselves as professionals in the workplace.
Congxiao Wang has Williams Syndrome, a genetic disorder that causes multiple developmental challenges. She's part of the inaugural class of the Project SEARCH program, where she's being trained as a cashier, among other jobs.
"I like the cashier very much," said Congxiao Wang, a student at Project SEARCH Toronto. "People ask me how I'm doing and [the cash register is] sort of like a friend that talks to me."
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"Before I was just so frustrated, always worried about what's going to happen to Congxiao after high school," said Suping Chang, Congxiao's mother.
"It will benefit her from all aspects for her health, well-being, self-confidence, self-esteem. She can do a lot, she just needs the opportunity."
There are more than 600 Project Search programs around the world, with 75 per cent of graduates finding employment.
"It gives me hope, because before and I never thought that I would work as a cashier," Wang told CBC's Our Toronto. "But now I learned how to do cashier and I think I'm very good at it."
WATCH: Congxiao Wang speaks to Our Toronto's Marivel Taruc about how Project SEARCH has changed her life.
You can find this and other stories about the city on Our Toronto — Saturdays and Sundays at 12 p.m., and Mondays at 11 a.m.
With files from Marivel Taruc