2 minute read
Splatter Painting to Small Business: ZABS Place Shows that Joy Can Be a Job
May 2024
By Madison Harr
Meet Noah, a young man with Down Syndrome, who joined our Talent-In-Training program because his Mom felt he needed extra support to prepare him for adult life. When we met him, his speech was limited and he struggled to focus, but his goofy joy was contagious.
At school he wasn’t learning job-readiness skills and his mother wanted him to learn how to be more serious.
As with all our trainees, Noah was paired with a job coach and he started job sampling. His coach, Kristen, introduced him to tasks such as hanging clothes, sorting small cars and action figures, counting puzzle pieces, dusting, and lots of other tasks. But nothing seemed to spark his interest.
He preferred to pick up handfuls of small toys and drop them into their buckets instead of sorting and separating them. Rather than putting clothes on the hanger, he enjoyed watching them fall off! The more he tried the more it was clear that he wasn’t really interested in the structure of most job tasks.
Noah joined ZABS Place as a Talent-in-Training in late 2021 and he’s been growing and learning ever since.
Through the months of training, it was clear that because of his limited speech Noah didn’t have an easy way to express his interests to others. But there was no doubt that what he enjoyed the most was being silly and having fun! So Ms. Kristen looked for opportunities to harness his personality to his advantage. After lots of brainstorming, Kristen had an unconventional idea and with a box full of supplies, she headed outside to try it. Step by step, she taught Noah how to express himself through splatter painting.
Finally, he had a productive way to express his personality and he loved it. Instead of having him complete tasks in the store, Noah joined our ZABSprenuer Micro-Business Incubator and “Noah’s HeART” began. As a ZABSpreneur, Noah had support to create his own line of art and stationery pieces to be sold at ZABS Place.
Now, he doesn’t just have a job that he is excited about, he owns his own business!
