Page 9 - Success Story Newsletter_Winter 2018

Training the Leaders of

Tomorrow

As a service specialist at Easterseals’ Raritan
Valley Work Center, I help prepare participants for
employment in their community. Recently, I led a
peer training session designed to foster leadership,
self-confidence, skill building, and team work within
program participants. This particular training has
helped participants identify relevant vocational
activities based on their interest. We have practiced
pizza making, folding and stacking t-shirts, sandwich
making, and sorting/filing, to name a few activities.
Through this process, participants were able to
experience different vocations in which they might
be interested in pursuing. Team leaders were also
chosen from the group at random in a simulation
exercise. The activity’s purpose was to promote
creativity and independence in deciding how they
were going to train their “employees” and what skills
needed to be gained in order to be successful in
performing their tasks. This allowed those chosen to
learn what it means to be an effective team leader.
Team leaders began by demonstrating tasks that
they needed performed then supervised “employees”
to ensure that the tasks were being done correctly.
With the help of staff, participants were able to
understand the importance of respectfulness, team
work, patience, and building confidence in one
another. We want to ensure our participants are
learning a variety of real-life job skills, allowing them
to take on any position in an organization.

We are so excited about the progress they are “
making! We want to ensure

- Melissa McFarland, Service Specialist our participants are
Raritan Valley Work Center (RVW)
learning a variety of

real-life job skills,

allowing them to take

on any position in an
"

organization.