In Part 1 of this interview with Laura O’Reilly, she explained the concept of Fighting Chance.  She and her team are developing models for employment opportunities for people with disabilities. These models can be replicated anywhere or everywhere.  Following are models that she and her team are working on right now, and you can bet there are more ideas to come from these creative thinkers.

Disaboom:  Tell us about your concepts for creating employment opportunities for people with disabilities:

Laura O’Reilly: “We started with online retail. We’ve developed a product called Shags http://www.shags.net.au/ Shags are shoe bags for corporate women who wear their trainers on the subway and put on their high heels when they get to their desk.  We sell the Shags through an online website, and market through targeted campaigns to chosen demographics. The model for online retail is you have a production line staffed by people with disabilities handling all sorts of different jobs. You have people with physical disabilities designing the website and running the commerce side of the website, doing the marketing and designing the look and feel of the brand.  You have people with intellectual disabilities packing up the product and sending it out. This model can be replicated with any commodity. What we’re developing is the techniques to allow people with disabilities to do the marketing and work on the computer.

“The other end of the scale, I guess you can say, are more sophisticated ideas. One idea is a Call Center idea we are working on. The call center concept is in many ways the perfect employment model for people with physical disabilities, who have the ability to use their voice and interact with the computer, but besides that have restricted physical ability. There are groups in the US doing exciting work around creating essentially sales roles for people with physical disabilities. We are looking at building a service for people with intellectual disabilities, whereby people with physical disabilities are at the end of the line if they get into trouble as they go about their daily life. Again, use of technology means that even a quadriplegic person, who can use a headset and interact with a computer with their eyes, could do the job.

“Another concept we are working on is the lead generation model. When people need something these days, they don’t go to the Yellow Pages, they Google. So you can design websites, basically around any service, which catches Google searches and funnels them to a service-provider, for a commission. Lead generation and affiliate marketing are online money making tools which contains endless opportunities for people with disabilities.

 “So those are the sorts of ideas that we are developing.  They are disparate and wide-reaching but we feel that a varied approach is essential to truly tackling the issue of disability unemployment. Ultimately, the only thing connecting the millions of people with disabilities is the fact that they have a disability. Like all people, it’s important to have options in what you do for work.  Choices is a pivotal concept for us. I don’t know how it is in America, but certainly in Australia, people with disabilities get to “choose” from a very small range of opportunities every day. So what we’re looking to do is use technology in a variety of ways so that people with disabilities have genuine choice in what they want to do.”

Disaboom: Does the Australian Government create jobs for people with disability in the government sector, as the U.S. Government does?  Or Australian corporations, do they hire people with disabilities?

Laura O’Reilly: “Yes, our government does create jobs for people with disabilities, and corporations do certainly hire people with disabilities, but statistics show the issue is not being resolved by reliance on these means. Statistics show that 50% of people with disabilities have employment compared to 83% of the general population, and when you talk about people with severe disabilities that number drops down to 15%. 

“So the group we’re concerned for are people who would not get a job in the government or in a corporate company. Obviously there’s a big spectrum of disability, and we often find that those with relatively mild disabilities are considered for employed by the government or in corporate environment. We are trying to help the people who just fall under that radar. They are people who would not get a job because of the severity of their physical disability. We’re moving away from the dialogue of asking corporate or government, almost as an act of charity, to give people with disabilities jobs, and instead, creating the tailored opportunities that they need. 

Laura O’Reilly is a graduate of the University of Cambridge and is currently studying postgraduate law at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. She has worked with various not-for-profits for over 10 years, including Oxfam and Amnesty International. Most recently, Laura spent two years leading the Cambridge team of the Global Poverty Project in the UK which works towards the eradication of extreme poverty in our world. However, disability is Laura’s passion, born out of a lifetime of watching the struggles and unquenchable spirit of her younger brother, who has cerebral palsy

Fighting Chance’s Enterprise Program is an innovative, forward-thinking, internet-based venture which creates employment opportunities for people with physical disabilities. The Program’s approach is very simple: instead of expecting square pegs to fit into round holes, we design the hole to fit the peg. The result is an interesting, challenging and fulfilling career for the individuals involved, as well as unleashing untapped productivity as people begin to be defined by their abilities, not their disabilities.

Read Part 1 of interview here: http://www.disaboom.com/job-advocacy/part-1-a-lesson-to-learn-a-group-of-aussies-think-out-of-the-box-to-empower-pwd

To learn more, go to: www.fightingchance.org.au