Coffee Shop Lessons: Project Educate Comes To Ellwood

Project Educate is returning to Ellwood City.

The workshops started in November and returned for its December workshop earlier this week. The plan is for it to keep coming back every second Monday of the month through the summer of 2019. These workshops are held at 6:00 p.m. at National Grind.

Project Educate offers free transition workshops for students ages 14 to 21 with challenges (a 504 plan/IEP, autism, chronic illness, disability, emotional/learning support, medical/mental health diagnosis, etc.) along with their parents, families, and supports.

“It’s a really great program and we have had a good turnout but in my personal opinion, I wish turnout would be greater since this information is so helpful for transition,” stated Ivan Jagersky, an instructor for Project Educate.

The program was started in 2017 when Vocational & Psychological Services (VPS) applied for one of the PA Office of Vocational Rehabilitation (OVR) “innovation and expansion grants” for a “parent/family engagement contract.”

These types of contracts had been offered to agencies, like VPS, so they could develop parent and family engagement programs that complemented the Pre-Employment Services (PETS).

Back in 2014, Congress had passed the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act. This act stated that state vocational rehabilitation agencies, like OVR, is to spend some of their budgets on students with disabilities. With this new act in action, PETS created new programs that included individual and group services. The group service is an in-school curriculum that teaches life skills, advocacy and workplace readiness that will teach the students involved work-related knowledge and skills. The individual services are job shadowing programs and a paid temporary work program, both involve the students working with a job coach.

When OVR got the new mandate, it decided to develop Pre-Employment Transition Services. These Services were geared to help students with disabilities ages 14 to 21. Previously, OVR worked with adults 18 years and older. Due to the new PETS services, OVR decided to fund parent and family engagement contracts to help publicize them and provide ancillary support.

Project Educate informs the families and parents that attend about OVR and PETS, along with any other transition-related topics they will need to know about.

Project Educate first came to Ellwood City back on November 12 as the start of their new monthly transition series they called Mental Health Mondays.

These workshops will happen every second Monday of the month at 6:00 p.m. at National Grind on Lawrence Avenue, with complimentary beverages and snacks provided. Earlier this week, on Monday, December 10, they held a workshop titled “How to Manage and Overcome Depression”.

The content for these workshops is determined by popular request. Meaning families and students can tell Project Educate what they want to know more about, and they will make sure those topics are discussed and represented.

These workshops are projected to continue through the summer of 2019, with the next Ellwood City workshop on January 14 titled “Substance and Technology use and Abuse”. 

You can attend events in Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, and Lawrence Counties to learn about school to work, school to post-secondary, and school to community transition topics, services, and resources.

Follow Project Educate on Facebook at facebook.com/vpsprojecteducate or call 724-841-9711 to learn about upcoming workshops near you.