Innovative Employment Strategies

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Description

Part I: Integration of Vision Rehabilitation Skills with Job Readiness Training: A Team Approach.
This 20 minute segment is a summary of how a non-profit developed a strategy for integrating career exploration and work skills training into traditional vision rehabilitation instructional models. Focus on program outcomes, challenges to employment for clients with vision loss and strategies for greater employment outcomes.

Part II: The Envision Workforce Innovation center supports both employers and employees in its mission to expand meaningful career opportunities for people who are blind and visually impaired. We will review some of the programs and services available to consumers nationwide. These include a new information technology and cyber security training and placement opportunity.

Contributors

Nancy Parkin-Bashizi, M.A., COMS, CVRT

Nancy Parkin-Bashizi earned her Master’s Degree in Orientation and Mobility and Rehabilitation Teaching for the Blind from the University of Arkansas, Little Rock in 1995. This year she celebrates her 25^th anniversary of employment at Vision Rehabilitation Services of Georgia. For the majority of her time with VRS she has worked as an itinerant teacher, providing O&M, VRT and Job Readiness Training services to clients of all ages.

For about 8 years, Nancy served as the Program Director and Lead Teacher at VRS. In this role she worked to develop new programs to meet the changing needs of clients and provide support and training to her teaching staff. VRS proudly supports professional training programs and hosts at least one OM or VRT intern each summer. Over the past 25 years Nancy has helped guide many new teachers into the field. Though Nancy is originally from Canada she officially became a US citizen in May 2015.

In 2012 Nancy earned her certificate in The Rehabilitation of Persons who are deaf-blind from Northern Illinois University and has used this knowledge to help build programs at VRS that provide training and support to clients who are hard of hearing and / or deaf-blind. Helping her staff learn the skills needed to work with this special group of clients is one of the achievements of which she is most proud.

Nancy has given numerous presentations on many aspects of Vision Loss and Vision Rehabilitation at professional conferences and in-service trainings throughout Georgia and the Southeast. In addition she has on occasion been an adjunct Professor for the VRT Program at Salus University. Most recently, Nancy has joined the board of GA AER, GA Blind Sports and is a member of ACVREP VRT SME committee.
Mika Pyyhkala

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Description

Contributors

Nancy Parkin-Bashizi, M.A., COMS, CVRT

Mika Pyyhkala