So many people are sitting around saying, well, the job isn't quite exactly what I
want.
Okay, if there's something else, and then something else, and all of a sudden it's three
years later and it's done, I've got a job, you know, hey, if it means cooking hamburgers
and McDonald's, get a job, and get out there and get some experience and go after it.
You know, that was one thing my father taught me and just beat it into me from the time
I was a little kid.
He said, nobody ever makes a great success out of like working 40 hours a week.
And when he was 14 and a half years old, his father sent him to Omaha, Nebraska with a
whole trainload of sheep by himself to sell the sheep.
14 and a half years old?
I mean, he had his first pair of long pants and he went and sold all the sheep and came
on.
And, I mean, he said, you know, he told me what to do, he never told me how to do it.
In 1989, my brother and I and my folks were trying to decide when my mother and my father
passed away in 1985, but we were trying to figure out what segment of the youth population
can we help out, what can we do?
And we sat down and went through everything we could think of and we said, you know, young
people with disabilities are making a tremendous contribution to our company.
We've been hiring them for years, but most of them out there are unemployed.
And what we need to do is get in there and try and find a way of helping these young
people get an opportunity for full-time employment.
So in the past 23 years, Bridges has helped more than 18,000 young people find meaningful
employment.
What Bridges does, we go work with the special education groups and the voc rehab groups
and so forth in the various cities that we're working with.
They identify students who could be possible Bridges candidates.
Our employer representatives work with these young men and women.
We train them how to make our application for a job, how to interview, how to perform
work, how to have a responsibility, how to do day-to-day job responsibilities.
I spoke today about this sweet girl named Maria in Dallas.
Hired by the Bank of America, they never hired anybody out of the program.
She has spina bifida.
She could barely walk, but you know, she said, people don't think I can do anything because
they can't walk straight.
But the Bank of America hired her.
She is a sensation.
I mean, they, if she's had three promotions, they've hired 31, 32 people since from the
Bridges program and because she is so darn good.
These kids are great for the team morale.
I mean, people will work with them and say, here's somebody who's truly excited about
their job.
I mean, wow, they show up, they work hard, they're happy.
They just excited to be there and be performing a useful service and it's good for everybody.
We deal with, well, we've dealt with 4,800 different employers down through the years.
So I mean, there are a lot of employers out there and it's usually, we're educating the
kids how to apply for jobs, we're also educating employers how to work with people with disabilities
and how to be comfortable with them.
And the comfort level is the most important single thing.
We can get them comfortable with working with these young people and know how they can best
apply their individual talents and it's a no brainer.
These kids can really make contributions and they can help us.
They can help with our morale, they can help with our bottom line, they can help with our
participation in the community.
It's a terrific opportunity for them to really bring these young people into the community
and into the business community.
