Creating Opportunity Through Community

If you look at our website and signage, you’ll notice the phrase “Creating Opportunity Through Community” surrounding our new logo.

This was a phrase developed by our web and logo design team from the Curio Collective after they sat down and chatted with us at our first discovery session with them. They heard us using the words “opportunity” and “community” over and over again, and felt that this was at the core of who we are.

And they were right. They get it.

In our official by-laws and documents, and on our “About Us” page, we have a rather lengthy mission statement that talks about what we do and how we seek to accomplish that.

But if you really want to, you can boil it down to just four words:

Creating Opportunity Through Community

Quite simply, we want nothing more than to create opportunities for the participants we work with day in and day out here at the Occupational Development Center.

Each of them has a very specific set of skills, and we work to help them develop those skills.

They also have their own individual passions and dreams for the type of work they would like to do.

By putting those skill sets and passions together, we hope to find opportunities for them in the workplace. We want to see them fully included and integrated into competitive employment situations, just like the rest of us. It doesn’t matter that they have developmental/intellectual disabilities. We work with them every day and we know they can succeed and flourish as employees of local businesses and organizations.

That’s where the “community” part comes in.

And that’s you!

You are our community. This includes our staff, volunteers, donors, and more importantly, the businesses and organizations of Lancaster County.

We need businesses like yours to come alongside the ODC and our participants, and find ways to employ them.

You might not think that it would work for you, but I bet if you give us the chance, we could sit down with you and help you discover ways that we can work together.

This could be in the form of contracting out to us to do some work for you here at our facility. Or, it might be having one of our Mobile Work Crews come out to do some work at your place of business.

Or, it might even be that you are ready to hire one of our participants to be a regular part of your staff.

Still not sure?

Don’t take it from us, take it from our current business partners.

Some of the companies and organizations that already understand the value of what we do, and love working with our participants, include:

• Kinsey’s, Inc.
• Amerimax
• Fabral
• Alert-All
• Meals on Wheels of Lancaster
• DentalEZ
• Electron Energy Corporation

So, go ahead. Challenge us. Give us a call (717-397-4269), e-mail us (hello@odcenter.org), or stop on by for a tour, and we’ll work with you to make this happen.

We love our community and we would love you to be a part of it!