Queens, N.Y. — Since 1990, the nonprofit Augie Phillips Center has been providing career services for the disabled community, such as career coaching, résumé building, group counseling, and social get-togethers. Its members swear the service is really helping them, even though the vast majority of them still have not received any job offers.
Program director Ivy Stone explained how the center’s employment program works: participants are directed to careers that would likely suit them and instructed on various aspects of job hunting such as dressing properly, writing cover letters, revising their résumés every two months or so, and contacting interviewers who already rejected them. If unable to find work, participants are told they are not doing enough and given more instructions. If, after following all the instructions, the participants are still unemployed, they are assured they are doing well and encouraged to meditate and write gratitude journals. As Stone put it, “it’s just a different kind of success.” Participants remain with the Center until they get hired, which is why most of them stay even far longer than planned. “It’s not like there’s anything else for them,” Stone notes.
Trevor Hotchkiss has ADHD and OCD and is frequently passed over by hiring managers, despite attending the Augie Phillips Center for the past three years. He describes the process so far: “In the first six months I didn’t even get called in for an interview, so they kept having me do more and more applications. When I still couldn’t find work, they kept asking if I really needed a job to be happy. And they did give the members a pizza party, so I guess they’re doing something right.”
Lana Thurman, who has chronic illness and has had trouble finding work with a flexible schedule, turned to the center two months after being let go from a fast food kitchen. She tells us, “It’s really helping me. They said I’d find work in no time, then after a year where I didn’t get any offers they insisted I’m not in a rush since I live in my uncle’s garage. They even had me take up yoga. So that’s a win, I guess.”
Stone claims a high success rate, citing a list of the program’s graduates who all got work (usually through friends or family members who are not connected to the Augie Phillips Center), and notes that, by their policy, even unpaid training or a few small gigs now and then counts as employment. As Stone put it, “they may be broke, but as we say, work’s work.”
One such success story, Ella Cardiff, who has mobility issues, says the facility technically did help her manage to make rent: “The building’s sterile lighting and gaudy carpeting were actually a perfect fit for selling feet pics. These feet may not be great for walking, but guys still pay a lot to look at them.”