 of our sector specific trainings which takes several months and really many of them require some English language competency. We want to think about the middle ground of trainings that are shorter in duration, but might have to actualize yourself, for example. So we're talking to potential partners both around those models and fundraising as well. Portia and Emma mentioned our construction site safety training program. We're very excited about that book is very relevant to our New Yorker population as it has been to recent immigrants' house. And we've applied for a potential funding source which we're very excited about that could raise the capacity of that program by 50%. So fingers crossed that anybody has their rabbit's feet with them. We're hoping that funding will come through, but if not, we're also pursuing other opportunities. And our wonderful community partners. I cannot say enough good things. We've been having, I would say there are top collaborator, top conversation partner, or top brainstormer. And we've been talking to our colleagues at CUNY about a number of different areas. One is partnerships, potential partnerships around DSL and potentialized DSL. And also to stand up some occupational trainings for New Yorkers that include an assessment of that around brick services. And we've had conversations with our La Guardia and our Lehman colleagues about those. So I didn't realize that I would be talking for so long. There's a lot of good stuff. I don't know how to say it more eloquently than that, but we're really, really excited to be working with our Deputy Mayor's Office colleagues, with our CUNY colleagues or colleagues at other city agencies, and also with our KYCB, HRA, and Drifter colleagues as well. We've been talking about it could be a whole other slide back for another day, but a real focus of our work this fall has been not only working in the SDS space and coordinating with our non-workforce development colleagues, but also working more closely with our fellow workforce development agencies such as HRA, such as the KYCB, such as DIPTA, to really think about as we look at the universal of your clients, and NYC talent helps us a lot with this work and is the linchpin of it, as we look at the universe of workforce development clients, which includes New Yorkers who can serve them the best and how can we support each other in that work. So very excited about it. Look forward to telling you about this work more to come in the one side and we appreciate your leadership and your partnership. Thank you so much. I'm happy to have any questions. I mean, I would say just anecdotally that the top industries where we're seeing opportunities don't differ too much from the top industries where we're seeing opportunities for all of our workforce one clients, but just to take some of them off the list, the combination of food services is always very popular, professional scientific services, construction, retail. So that's just yesterday, as a matter of fact, we placed some New Yorkers in security guard jobs, studio work, parking lot attendant work. So it varies. And we're also looking at more skilled roles and limited level roles too. So in terms of the pipeline growing, Emily made a very good point. We're starting out and it's kind of like a like inverted pyramid. We're starting out with the base of over 1,000, but it's going to continue to grow. So one of the things that my team is waiting and we're standing up the team internally that we're going to grow even stronger within the workforce development in the USS is for business development, we can leave no stone unturned. So not only reaching out to existing employers, those that reach out to us, we've been connected to city hall to numbers, having agencies that we've had calls with I think no less than three in the past week, maybe four or five, you know, our own personal networks, networks that leadership has. So we really want to make sure that we're connecting to New Yorkers team of the jobs. So we're going to continue doing that work. Not a lot of people were going for the temporary work. What percentage of people are eligible to go for it? And what percentage have accepted it? We can follow up on that specific number. Okay. Sorry. We can follow up on that number, but just to clarify your question is how many are eligible and how many of those who are eligible are applying? Yeah. Okay. Let's follow up on that specific question. We can talk to them. So that is of course a path into the union. I trust that these are we don't mind beginner or entry level, but at all. Are we using any incentives for the businesses that want to be involved? Not at this stage. We welcome a conversation about if you have ideas about that specifically, but not currently at this stage. And just to close the thought out on TPS, we to Yuri's point were being extremely committed to reaching all of the folks who have who are eligible for TPS, specifically Venezuelans, which are the recent population that were recently made eligible through the shelter system and through workforce one outreach. And I think that this exciting model of coming on site physically to the shelter systems will also help support that outreach. One thing I want to know, even though it's not designed as a business incentive per se, are customized training opportunities offered through SPS, where businesses, especially small businesses, tend to see grants to be able to upscale their workforce and increase wages. They serve as a really good incentive in your mind. So to the extent that some of our smaller businesses about the city are able to bring on workers, including New Yorkers for a time, start at a lower wage and then upscale them, we have generous funding available through SPS in order to be able to do that upskilling to meet and even even your better wages for it. So I think we're looking, I shouldn't say I think I know, we're looking to broaden the pool of eligible businesses for that and broaden the reach of those funds. So just to build on the standard planning questioning. So the incentives aren't necessarily to hire New Yorkers. The incentive to a business center isn't necessarily to hire a New New Yorker, but once they're in, once the New Yorker has hired their incentive to upskill them. Sure. I would add the following to that. Yes, I would say that one of the primary incentives that Workforce One offers, that our Workforce Development System University offers to hire workers, is we'll do a lot of backend work for you. So we'll pre-screen clients and we will post new job fairs. We will do everything but the final interview for you. So to me, if you're a small business owner, if you're really, really busy, if you don't have a lot of experience in hiring, very much it's not an understatement to say that Workforce One could be your in-house shop for a lot of that work. So while we may not be offering cash incentives per se, for you to hire New New Yorkers, we are offering services that you have a tremendous value, especially to a small business owner or any business owner, for that matter, who may not have the resources to provide. But in terms of upstilling workers, what you stated is a smile. I understand. Thank you. My question, this issue is very important to me personally, as well as important. And obviously, like all other New Yorkers and children on the streets, all of us can do it. What have you, and so we want to do what we can. I'm interested, Vice President Gore shared with me his analysis that this is actually the first wave of migrants from the climate crisis. And I don't know to the extent that that has been useful as a brain in attracting a different kind of bill-and-profit support. So if that hasn't been the case, certainly I would want to be helpful in trying to figure out ultra-high net worth individuals and foundations who may not have a pure workforce pieces to their funding would certainly want to be supportive of helping the first wave of migrants who are playing droughts in economic conditions caused by those droughts and getting them set up. And so there's a reframing there. So that's part of the question. And then my real question, I guess, is this issue is so important to change this week and week. What is the role that you all see of the workforce work of us? What are we being asked to do? And what are the ways that people like me, who this is a very high priority for, can be 100% supportive of the efforts of what specifically do you guys need to do? Yes, we can give you a role as an ex-employer. Is that the main thing to go talk to other employers and bring you a little bit of people who want to hire? What can we do? I would say to begin first, thank you for your earlier comments. I think there's a lot of opportunities just as a sign out in green jobs. Mayor Adams has certainly made that a priority across the agencies. And it's something, as my team is doing strategic planning for calendar year 2024, it's an area that we want to focus on more. So I thank you for that. In terms of what this board of very tremendous and exceptionally distinguished leaders, what we can use your support with, you know, I would start with two areas. One is the Rolodex, believe it or not, if anybody has any more, or your outlook or your LinkedIn contacts. So weak is a metaphor. I am a very unashamed, I'm a shy person socially, but I'm unashamed with following through the following with this board. Anybody who's willing to hire new workers and has big jobs available for them, you would love to do that. So we're doing a lot of that work already, but there are tens of thousands of businesses just in the five boroughs alone. We can never have too many contacts that date to new connections or any jobs we can source would be amazing. I would say, you know, secondly is, you know, funding opportunities. So my talk today was introduced as how we're serving New Yorkers within the framework of, you know, workforce innovation and opportunity at VOA funding, which is the main crux of this board, obviously. But VOA is a start. It's not the finish. So we're always looking to, you know, of course we have some city tax-loving funds, but even if it weren't a challenging fiscal climate, we're always looking how we can innovate, how we can add, how we can enhance. And you know, one of the things that we're seeing, which I think it's obvious for the state, but I'll say it nonetheless, is that many New Yorkers have higher levels of need in terms of wraparound and support services. The level of services just above or just below, depending on how you want to look at it, you know, services that are peer workforce. So, you know, connections between connections to professional clothing, connections to mental health, talking about mental health in the workplace, talking about mental health in the home, for example, adjusting to a new culture. All of these things are supported in various degrees by different workforce partners, you know, whether they join, whether it's EYCD, whether it's SDS. But I think there's always a need, even if we weren't in a migrant crisis, to expand those services more and to also think about our training models, how we could expand our training models and how we can expand in a more rapid way. So, to the extent that there are some of the philanthropic opportunities that you spoke about, those, you know, types of introductions, helping us think strategically about, you know, different resources, whether they're monitoring or otherwise, that we can use to expand training and expand, you know, wraparound services. And those are two areas that I can think of. And my colleagues probably have two more as well. Yeah, I have two other thoughts. I absolutely appreciate the climate connection to this and it absolutely is part of our philanthropy strategy, as is, you know, I think when we take a step back, we've talked about this being impacted by climate, but also it's shown cracks in our housing shortage. So, you know, going after the ties between that, going after, you know, immigration support and like legal services provider funding, I think the it has exposed cracks that can be covered, not just purely by migrant specific focused funding. So, absolutely welcome a conversation on philanthropy. And then I think, you know, broadly this work, a lot of us have been just sort of heads down, grinding to try to make sure that folks have shelter and have a place to sleep. And the work on the workforce side is really how are we thinking about getting folks on a path to self sufficiency. And, you know, the federal government was, has been helpful in the TPS designation, but we absolutely need more, both on making more folks eligible, more populations eligible, as well as just a national resettlement strategy. New York is really shouldering a lot of this burden. But we don't see it as a burden, because these are all folks who can work. We have businesses who can hire them who need folks to work. But New York City is paying for the crisis. And it is impacting, I think, as all of you know, other city services. We're having three rounds of pegpots that are, you know, going to be very challenging across all of the agencies. So, I think joining us in our federal advocacy is also a large ask and I'm happy to pop with anyone who's interested. Housing and, you know, federal advocacy, I just want to add one last thought. I was on a panel earlier this week and one of the questions that I was going to be asked that I guess didn't come up was what can folks do to advocate for more workforce development funding? You know, just like across the board, whether it's VL or other things. And I was going to say, you know, it's seeing workforce development as a basic human right, seeing a job as a basic human right, just like housing, just like food, just like clothing. It's no, it's not by coincidence that Deputy Mayor Storrs Springer's title is Deputy Mayor for Economic Development, Housing and Workforce. It's funny, I have a housing background and vision to a workforce background. Many colleagues that I meet do as well. And they do go together, but often people, especially the late public, don't think of them together and they should. You know, workforce, getting a good job, it should be viewed as a basic human right. And once more people do it as such, I think our advocacy efforts around funding will become a lot easier. You talked about the broad range of services across agencies, and then we say, expand that. Does there need to integrate those services? Are families receiving wellness and mental health and workforce development and clothing from the same provider or families moving between different agencies to receive the services from different agencies? You know, that's not a critique. It's helpful to explain the process. So those services are going to be offered and are starting to be offered through our case management services for all migrants. It has been kind of initially been provided through referrals from the intake centers where folks come in, but there are a lot of touch points and depending on whether you're in a DSS shelter or making some management shelter, we are doing a lot of work to connect to those folks in those individual places. And Workforces is one of those pieces. But I think your point earlier was if you have providers or organizations who are interested in getting involved more, please share them when we can plug them into that existing infrastructure. And looking at the especially small businesses that are more likely are interested in hiring this demographic. How are you thinking about supporting them in terms of because having in my first company, we hired a lot of refugees. And so we also had a lot of employees that were living in shelters. And that created a ton of obstacles in terms of just getting them to show up to work because there's not a well thought out integration between what that looks like. Whether it's restrictions on when they can enter and leave the building, their work schedule is oftentimes not working traditional hours. How are you navigating that? I think that's a really great point. We're still in the very early stages of placing New Yorkers in jobs. The issue that you mentioned actually just came up. It's almost like you had a vision into my emails two days ago, right? And the issue was, and I'm like fully transparent so I don't mind sharing this as well. The issue was is that there was an employer that has some really great custodiality and created really great widgets. But the issue was the curfew at the shelters. So in my follow up in the afternoon days, one of the things we're going to see is what can we do about those rules? Those rules of course are designed to make sure people are safe. But of course, in addition to being safe, we need people to be able to have gainful employment and to have them maybe livelihood. So I'm sure there is a happy meeting there. So we're going to work as we're building relationships with the shelter directors. We're going to work on that and also speak to those clients to see what they need. Do they need metro cards? Do they need some support for Uber or Lyft on occasion? Things like that. And we're also thinking about as we do New Yorker 2.0, what additional supports do we need? Some type of guide or maybe some type of training or we know business owners, especially small business owners, are very busy. It's in the nature. They're not going to sit through a five hour training. But is there a quick guide? And I know that the State Department of Labor has developed similar things. So we're going to collaborate with that. When you're employing New Yorkers, what are some things you need to know, say about work authorization as well, about the services that SDS offers, about the services our country is offered, that NISDL, that State UL offers. So we've been thinking about scaling something up like that. But you made an excellent point and it speaks to the need of us to work with the shelter directors closely, that rules and regulations and things like that aren't an obstacle for folks that have jobs. And we want to make it easy rather than hard for small businesses to be able to employ New Yorkers. So thank you for that excellent point. We're just starting on that work. But it's a top of mind. So what is that federal housing alternatives within non-profit programming that might be able to address that? If you were thinking about how to expand those alternatives that are outside of the public shelter. And how can they do that? That kind of helps with philanthropic strategy. I'd love to know what that strategy is, but I will say that having a clear ask of philanthropy of what you need, and if it's something like funding housing or stipends, and I will say, and I said this a hundred times with that, where I'm seeing the most success is when their subsidy for small businesses and pay in the beginning is a lot more effective in having them hire than to ask them to have people go to training. So small businesses are really resistant to having their employees go to training. They need them there. So I think the subsidies on the front end are more helpful. And then that's also going to be part of your philanthropic strategy to say, hey, we want to fund this portion of wages so that we can get them in for this long term. So I think that where I struggle is when there isn't a strategy and a real partnership between the city and the land. I'm sure other people on the asylum see their team would say that other things that we've done it, but since we are in front of you, we will say that we will absolutely be coming to you with our workforce list. But also, I don't know if you've been plugged in with the work that some of our colleagues are doing at City Hall on the flip side. So I'm happy to do that. But I would also say that, and just like out now, Breaking Ground has an amazing facility on Broadway in the city where folks can come in and come out as they feel. But it's small, right? So how do they expand that for the, well, they lose the bed, they lose the bed, and no one's going to lose the bed. So it's something to think about. A great conversation, including the New Yorker situation is changing as we speak every day, trying to get a handle on what's happening. We have incredible colleagues from the government here. What I would suggest is we need to have this conversation. So I think we're very clear that the government cannot do this unless they have the state and the federal government. So we'll figure our heads together and figure out how to continue to engage you. Because again, I don't think anybody knows exactly how to do this on the scale that we are operating at right now under the very tight fiscal constraints we have. Thank you so much. We're just going to change the agenda a little bit. So now we're going to hear about initiatives that I was talking about earlier this summer. I plan to advance the career success of people with disabilities. We're excited to welcome three guests for this competition. Christina Curry, commissioner of mayor's office for people with disabilities. Martha Jackson, assistant commissioner and office for people with disabilities. Martha Jackson, executive director for the Center for Workforce and Classability Inclusion and she joined the New York City College team in the way of her last month. Her bio in the boardbook is the correct one. And David Kerman, deputy director of mayor's office for economic opportunity. That's for my title. Yeah, so I'm going to kick things off here. Being on this project alongside these great partners. What's, I think we may have given these a snippet of this in past meetings. Basically, this is a really unique partnership across three mayors offices. We've got the mayor's office for people with disabilities. We used to have Commissioner Curry here with us today. Our office NYC talent, which Martha is now a part of, and the mayor's office for economic opportunity. NYC opportunity for short. And we've been working together, the plan quite some time over the summer. Mayor Adams announced the plan, plan to advance the career success of people with disabilities. And basically, it has two key components to it. On one hand, we wanted to increase investments in direct program services for people with disabilities. And a lot of those investments are in partnership with our colleagues in the partners for business services, SPS, in the workforce one career. So we're making investments in the workforce on career centers to try to bring in more expert staff that can help serve people with disabilities in the centers themselves. Starting in Brooklyn. And the other part of the plan is we're focused on systems change. So what Martha is heading up is the Center for Workplace Accessibility and Inclusion. And so that is not going to be a place where we are trying to deliver services. Rather, it's going to be how do we help eliminate barriers that make it harder for people with disabilities to pursue jobs for years. There are financial disincentives. There's Medicaid and computes. There's all sorts of things that are disincentives. And Martha's going to talk more about the work that she is launching with the center. And David's going to talk a little bit about his work with MSE Opportunity as a part of this broader mission. And with that, I will turn it over to Commissioner Murray from Mayor's Office Spilitz. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. How are you all today? All right, I'm going to try that again, please. I can hear you. Thank you. So good morning. How are you? Better. Thank you. Okay. So just what you all know to do the air, I came here before I joined MSE Opportunity as an advocate for the disabled. I'm personally disabled myself. So my perspective is different. Okay. And I'm going to voice for myself now. So it's not awkward. Coming from the perspective of an advocate, I came from the disability community. And I came here as a person who works for, as a catalyst for change, permanent systemic change. In other words, when you were not compliant, you came after me. And then you had today. In joining MLPD and having great discussions with MASA, it only took like a week or less than a few months to know that MLPD had been underfunded for years in this initiative. Basically, we had no money. The administration, our administration, this current administration is committed to embracing the disability community and defying the myths and the stigma that my community still faces to this day. In other words, most people presume if you're disabled, you can't work. Or if you can work, it's low level jobs. It's stuff that does not really apply on maximum people who have the degrees. But because of the disability, people perceive us as different. Okay. So if you look at the slide there, two thirds of the community, people with disabilities, are, do not work. This figure is chronic. And it has not really changed for the past 15 years. That, however, is opposite for our non-disabled here. 60% are employed. 30% of New Yorkers with disabilities live in poverty compared to 11.9% of non-disabled New Yorkers. So while we're talking about employment, we're talking about we need gainful employment so that we can afford to live in our own apartments so that we can afford to eat. We should not have to choose between one or the other. For next slide. So what we're also talking about is for the city has invested very little in employment services for people with disabilities prior administration when that's talking about this one. Over a three-year period, the mayor's office of people with disabilities raised more than $5 million from private foundations and additional state funding. I have to stop and acknowledge Martha Jackson for that. That was Martha. And also additional state funding. Over a comparable three-year period, the city invested only about $1 million. This included five baseline staff members dedicated to employment services. Again, that's Martha's efforts. So we need to acknowledge that. Just this really would not be a discussion without her. For the next slide, we'll just move on. With a successful model in place, we, this whole team and others, are building on MOPD's NYC at work. And that's the first public private workforce program for people with disabilities. That's huge and very important to know. Launched by the mayor's office of people with disabilities, MOPD five years ago was to they were working on helping New Yorkers with disabilities thrive in the workplace. I cannot be the only person who's working as commissioner. Other people who are disabled can do the job when given the opportunity. Again, Martha, I'm just kidding. I want everybody to know. The program that Martha worked on assisted 700 New Yorkers with disabilities to jobs over three years. Now, MOPD and as Chris said, we're partnering with SPF, NYC talent to embed NYC at work into the Brooklyn workforce one center. And this will be to increase the number of people who are disabled entering into the workforce. So we have the 55A program and that's to increase the number of people with disabilities or as we say PWDs in city job, including the New York state civil service program that allows qualified New Yorkers with disabilities to access city jobs without taking a city or the civil service exam. So, since you know years ago, I applied through the 55A program and it kind of just stared at me like, why? No, they said I was actually they said I didn't need to take the city servals service exam because I could use my voice. And that meant to them when you can't be deaf and use your voice. That's not correct. You cannot hear but still use your voice. That's important to know. You have to do education as well. Working closely with DCAS, they who oversees 55A program, the 700 total slots but less than half are filled currently, meaning we still have slots available to be filled by people with disabilities. NYC at work connected 120 individuals to city jobs. The SCION program, this took me a minute to understand what it was, coming in as a new person. But this is systems change and innovation opportunity network. New York State Department of Labor funded the program to expand the participation of individuals with disabilities in workforce one career sense system. In other words, the state has evolved again because of Martha's effort so that we will have a program that will also improve their employment outcomes. The sustainable job driven inclusive model that involves business and workforce demand. Let me just say this again. Why this is important because it gives us the opportunity for disabled people to be in jobs that they're non-disabled peers are also working in. We can be side by side. Don't ever say because we're disabled, we can't. And that is something that Martha had pushed was all the things she worked for. So she made my job easier when I came in as a commissioner. The other thing about the SCION staff is that the working collaboration with SDF and the workforce center, it is so much easier for me to sign than the voice, but I'm trying. So thank you. So if I stutter a little bit, just because I'm trying to remember how the word sounds. So as I was saying, it's they're going to be working with these other agencies centers to support and expand partnership, collaboration, service coordination, and service delivery, of course, multiple education, workforce, disability, and career pathway program. Financial counseling. So we're going to be partnering with the Department of Consumer and Workforce Protection. We will have the opportunity to expand our power New York City financial counseling programs to New Yorkers with disabilities and their families at the Workforce One Centers. Just a little tangent on that. There are many people within a disability group who have not had the full training, just like they're non disabled peers, understand how do you budget your money? What do you do with your money? Do I pay my rent because I just got my first very large check? Do I pay my rent? Do I buy the new speakers? So with this financial counseling, this will assist people to understand money better. And this has not happened in the classroom. A lot of times it doesn't happen at home, just like they're non disabled peers. So a little background note. I'm going to give you this. Out of the 18 career centers managed by SDS that annually connect 25,000 New Yorkers to jobs, over the past few years, Workforce One has served about 3,000 individuals with disabilities and connected roughly about 350 to jobs. Now, since I've mentioned her name so much, I'm offering her up next. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner. Can you hear me? Thank you. That's why we get along. So first of all, I just I'm really happy to be here and meeting all of you and talking about this, but I just have to take a moment because eight and a half years ago, when I joined the mayor's office for people with disabilities, so did Chris. Oh, he didn't join the mayor's office for people with disabilities, but he joined back in the workforce. And Chris and I, from our first meeting, really wanted to see what we could do to create an integrated, accessible, respectful, vibrant workforce program that was sustainable that included the city's workforce system. And we worked for eight and a half years to be able to do this. But under this administration, we were actually able to take the ideas that we had had for so long and move them forward. And I am eternally grateful to Chris. And he also allowed me to come over here with Abby and the team to be able to make these things happen. So if I could just have you just join me in thanking Chris. So the center for workplace accessibility and inclusion. First of all, you know, everything that we learned at MLPD, the pilots, the learnings, and the capacity that we have, we know that we've been historically siloed from those other city agencies focused on workforce development. The disability community is siloed, period. It's siloed by disability, it's siloed by funding. And because of that, people don't collaborate. And you can understand why. But through NYC work, we were able to kind of break down that barrier. We were not interested in the funding. We wanted to be able to make sure that other participants from our community-based partners had the opportunities for all the opportunities that that we were bringing together. And there's no cultural and no rather no central organization working in the disability workforce space to unite the field. And that's what really has been missing. So the center, which is now located here at the Office of Talent and Workforce Development, will be a public-private partnership. It is designed to tackle structural challenges that have impeded New Yorkers with disabilities from entering the workforce for so long. So we would be the intermediary needed to unite the field and ensure we identify and we address challenges holding people with disabilities from finding careers, jobs and internships. We've already started establishing an advisory council comprised of employers, providers, funders, government partners, agencies, advocates and members of the disability community. And most importantly, we must engage employers and workforce, workforce providers to help them make their workforce and their workplaces and their services more accessible. But we need the city to be the shining example of this because we can't ask businesses to do what we're not doing ourselves. And that's a very important role that we are taking on. Partnering with key stakeholders to identify the most pressing challenges, align our public and private funding as we did at the mayor's office for people with disabilities. And most importantly, advance a shared agenda for policy change. Historically, the data for people with disabilities has been just terrific. And so we are going to be centralizing data and tracking. We're going to identify, promote and scale the best practices that we know exist because in some cases, we were part of creating those best practices, but we need the business community to be able to support us. And this is really interesting as well. I think you've heard how important CUNY is to all of the workforce programs, but infusing accessibility design into computer science courses across CUNY to ensure that the next generation of technologists understand why, but most importantly, how to design software and hardware products that are going to use finger quotes here, born accessible. You don't have to make something, go back and try to remake it. You make it right from the very beginning. And launching a talent investment fund, investing in promising practices for serving people with disabilities, and for making mainstream programs fully accessible. And then finally partnering with NYC Opportunity to co-design new innovative workforce services, serving individuals with disabilities. And for that, I'm going to turn it over to my partner, David Berman. Good morning, everyone. I'm so excited to be here with all of you and with this superstar panelists of mine here. I've been working over many months with this team to develop the plan. And one of the things our office does, the Mayor's Office for Economic Opportunity, is we're really focused on using research data and innovation to solve problems like poverty and to promote equity. And so when we had the opportunity to partner around this issue, I think we were really excited because we were also recognizing has already been said just how under invested in this issue has been the lack of research and evidence around what types of strategies are most effective for these communities really struck us. And so as the plan was being developed, our office decided to pursue a new initiative as well. And for those of you who might be familiar with the Mayor's Office for Economic Opportunity, we've invested in developing a lot of different workforce initiatives with city agencies over the years, programs like Jobs Plus, Advance and Earn with DYCD, many different agencies we've worked with to develop workforce programs. And so we felt there was a really exciting opportunity to do some new investment here. And parallel to that, I think our office has also been really focused on how can we do more co-development and co-design strategies with effective communities that we're partnering with and to use city government tax money, all of our collective funding that we have some of in our office to invest in promising programs and into evaluation. So we wanted to bring kind of those two strands together and say, let's develop, we need more evidence around what works for these communities. We need more investment in workforce programs. And so how can we do that and bring together the co-design piece that we would like to do? And so over the past couple months, we've been working to develop this new initiative and we're working right now on a concept paper that we hope will come out in the next couple months to all of you. We'll need you to help us spread the word into the different communities. And what we'd like to do is fund a set of workforce providers to engage in a co-design process with people with disabilities to create new models, to create new programs. And so the idea is we would select a design firm that will support all of these nonprofits or other types of providers that will develop programs and then fund a planning process over several months with each of the selected providers who will each work with their communities to develop new programs. Then we will fund that program that they develop. So over multiple years and we'll use data and research to understand how they're working, how we can improve them, at which ones are working well and should be expanded. So we have set aside our own city funding to do this. We're going to start with the concept paper so that we can make sure this is something innovative that we're doing. While we use co-design in a lot of ways in our program development, this is a really intense form of that that we're trying to demonstrate other city agencies could use more broadly. So that's part of our goal in doing this is just to demonstrate that co-design is important and effective way of creating new programs rather than just saying here's a top-down model we're going to fund and you have to do these 10 things the way that we tell you. Instead we're saying we're going to invest in you working with your community to tell us what program you think will work best and then we'll partner on that. So we think with the funding that we have we could probably support three maybe four organizations who will do this work as I mentioned will also be funding a design partner who will work with those firms to support them through a design process that we think should last around nine months and then we will be funding the projects that come out of that. So we're hiring a staff person right now who will be helping us launch this and as I mentioned we've been working collectively all of us on this concept paper and so you can expect to hear more about it soon we'll want everyone's feedback and we'll use that feedback to really finalize an RFP that will release soon after the concept paper. So that's kind of the gist of it and it's one that we're really excited about we expect different models we expect some of the models might be more focused around job training creating a whole new type of workforce preparation initiative some and could be transforming an existing big system or big program to make it more accessible so that's another thing that folks could apply to do they can also apply to work directly more directly with employers around making their hiring practices and their existing workplace more accessible and more successful for people with disabilities who are there so we're kind of open to different types of approaches and we hope to fund a bunch of different approaches so that we can really increase. So that's another bit in a nutshell I know we don't have too much time so I'll just stop there and I'm sure folks might have questions for. Thank you. I've been using the word communities because I think there really are so many and I think unfortunately we don't have enough funding to be able to reach every need so we just will ensure when we make our selection that they're diverse in terms of the communities they serve which could be geographic it could be people with a particular you know set of disabilities it could be a program that serves anyone with any kind of disability we're a bit agnostic going in we're data driven so we're you know of course want to support the areas with the greatest need and where they're the most service gaps that currently exist but our goal is just to try to fund as many different types of approaches as possible and you know for those who are interested in philanthropy we would love additional funding to support this initiative if you if you have access to philanthropic partners we could add more um grantees to this if we had more private money who want to throw into the pot so um we would be very excited to be able to award make more awards and serve more communities. Can you give us sort of like a lay of the land. We're talking about different communities it could be sensory as in hearing vision you can go over to the neural the atypical neural section of the community which would include those from the autism spectrum tbi we also have physical disabilities the physical disabilities itself breaks into different groups those who use chairs those who use mobile um assistive device like i do those who are dependent on human guides to help them because of their disability you when you talk about physical disability also it could be someone who's in their fatigue because they don't fit in the same needs category as someone in a wheelchair we go the entire spectrum that also includes those with the invisible disabilities chronic illnesses and so forth so as you can see it's a vast landscape and believe it or not we don't all mix together and we don't have the same needs as one or the other does in the other group like like myself was considered multiple disabilities multiple disabled um so it's a challenge on who you're going to pick from or what you really need that will help or assist the majority of people it's really going to be interesting when you look at the various communities and that's how we refer Bell Bell as communities not just one um like really have there been any really effective um i'd like to answer that so nyc at work which was the program that um came out of the mayor's office for people with disabilities was really to address the joblessness situation um i joined in 2015 to address that uh i looked at a lot of different cities a lot of different programs um but basically i will tell you the one thing that i learned is that whenever you're talking about employment with people with disabilities you're never talking to employees so when we started uh nyc at work the first thing i did was have focus groups with um with employers and businesses and ask them why is this so hard how can we help you what do you need um and just briefly i will tell you that no matter the sector they all said the same things number one we don't know where to get the talent number two we don't have dedicated staff and resources like we do with our other initiatives number three we don't understand disability we're not educated um reasonable accommodation you know we we are afraid of that we're afraid of liability number four human resources we usually stop the process at the door because they really are afraid about what's going to happen if they hire someone and mostly oftentimes people will say before i'm going to hire somebody what happens if i have to get rid of them um and then the last thing is that when someone does get hired usually there's no clear approach so you have that idea the poster person in your office who's had the same job for 14 years and has never been able to move up and that's actually what nyc at work was based on the businesses don't know where to get the talent but we do you don't have dedicated staff and resources to do this we'll get the money we'll hire the people we'll help you which is where the five million or so dollars came in to be able to hire dedicated staff professionals with expertise across all disabilities and workforce development you know they said we don't understand disability we we're not sure we created a disability etiquette awareness training program that it started you know with just a small group but as our office expanded it is now presented by people with lived experience those who are blind those who have hearing loss a person you know with a physical disability across all specters because they talk about living and working as a person with a disability and until you have a conversation with someone and you can break that that barrier and that myth you're not going to be able to see beyond that so that's oftentimes our first step and we created a business development council oftentimes most of the people there were in hr a lot of people were in the ergs because they have a real interest in this um and at one point we had over a hundred members pre-covid and they actually helped us get to those 700 jobs because only 120 of those jobs that we got were from government all the rest were from the private sector non-profit in the private sector and then the last is you know a person gets a job and that's where they stay i am so proud of the team at nyc at work because they have taken that on um when someone has been in a job for at least a year um we start talking about what's your next step where do you need to go and we've seen real career growth over the course of the past three to five years even during covid um salaries have increased uh you know for a lot of people people live on social security ssi can be less than a hundred eight hundred dollars a month a lot of the folks that we have their starting salary is around fifty one fifty two thousand dollars and and you know that's not enough to live in new york city but it sure beats living on social security and these are all the things that all of us are trying to really address and figure out but we cannot do it without businesses because without businesses we're not in business and so that's really the model that we created and i'm very pleased to say that it's being replicated now in some other cities it is still available and i think we've helped over six hundred six thousand folks um get connected to the training we've done it the team did it virtually all through covid um it's still available to do in person but part of what we're going to be working on here is actually creating those trainings for our business community so they have they will have access to this um we know that you don't know what you don't know and if no one's telling you or sharing you're never going to be able to get to the next step and the truth of the matter is is that people with disabilities like ourselves are are dedicated resourceful um committed individuals that want to do well they want to be part of a mission a goal it's not just about the paycheck um and i think it's really important to understand that the disability community is one we can join at any time and so keeping that in mind because you might be looking at somebody um who on the other hand might be looking at you and you need to think about that because the truth of the matter is is that we're all getting older we have to work longer and disability is part of aging in many cases so um there's a lot for us to do collectively and i'm open and willing to talk to anybody who has any ideas about how to move this needle forward and if you're interested in disability etiquette awareness training or talk about how we've helped businesses please don't hesitate to reach out one of the things for me that i really appreciate as an employer is that we provided support for orientation for the employees um whenever there was i needed to have a meeting that we needed to make sure that the communication was clear and there was at hr-related meeting that there was support also and i think those little of the losses was really helpful to ensure that we were safe and supported in the environment so that's really good to know and we we have a great partner who's in the room as well um new york state access vr uh our state vocation rehabilitation agencies are an amazing partner and will oftentimes provide that kind of support as well we don't do this in a vacuum we are always looking to be able um to help businesses because when you know you know you hire talent you want to keep the talent um it helps your bottom line but sometimes you need a little help to do that there's also a lot of tax credits there's um on the job training dollars we're accessible there's so many opportunities um to create a really inclusive and accessible workforce so thank you for that we are going to read the report for um for our next meeting and then i will take a motion to a second all in favor thank you everyone oh I've seen her, she's like, the powerful New Yorker. I love it, she's like, everybody claps. I'm assuming you could have everybody, because it was like, yes, oh yeah, now I'm going to be there. I don't, I'll send you everything in a little bit, yep. Thank you so much. Thank you. So we, we have a few conflicts where we're supposed to bring every building in the city across. You were going to buy a building in a coat on that. You know, you know, you know, so we were cohort one. Yeah. I'm going to see you. I'm sorry. Definitely easier. I'm just going to look at it. I'm just going to look at it. I'm just going to look at it. I'm just going to look at it. I'm just going to look at it.