Many of us are deeply touched by people or issues in our lives. For the NameStormers’ founders, that issue is autism and that person is a son, now 20. For a number of years, the company has been focused on helping and supporting those touched by autism and its challenges.
Our involvement has ranged from legislative activity and involvement with several national autism organizations to contributing to a local home for the mentally and physically challenged: Hope House.
We became aware that there is a lack of long-term services, support and jobs for individuals with autism. As the founder’s son moves into adulthood, we realize there is a great opportunity to help improve awareness, support and aid. We believe these individuals can be contributing members of society; they have skills that can make them employable, helping them realize their potential. With his job coach, the founder’s son is able to perform tasks in our office and for a local business and church, too.
For this reason, we have created a jobs for autism website. It is an open portal for individuals with autism and their cargivers, job coaches, parents and guardians to share valuable information and ideas. The website is currently a place to post job success and failure stories as well as share job ideas. Later on, we envision a site to help individuals locate autism-friendly employers with local jobs suited to an autistic individual’s unique skills and special needs. We hope this is a step toward increasing meaningful employment for those with autism. Many thanks to our initial development team at the University of Notre Dame for helping us get this concept off the whiteboard and onto the website.
A recent picture from a Hope House field trip. During this trip high school students and a couple of NameStormers’ team members played London Bridge and other games with special needs residents.
The dedicated Jobs4Austim team at Notre Dame consisted of 4 Seniors who are, from left to right: Scott Meier, Ramiro (Ram) Ballesteros, Michael Lerma and Kathleen Pedraza. This photo was also shot by a Notre Dame Senior who has launched her own photography business, Kaity Fuja. Other samples of her work can be found at www.omg-photography.com.
