An Alternative Path For Our Neurodivergent Youth And Young Adults

What if we were to construct an alternative, brighter future for our Neurodivergent youth and young adults…what might that look like?  A future where very early on in their life journey they start preparing for a future of creativity, innovation and value creation rather than a future pre-determined by existing models of workforce readiness and perceptions of work capabilities.  A future where each individual has the opportunity to explore a possible future that takes into consideration what is truly unique about them, their talents, their life experiences, their dreams and hopes.

Learning digital music production when instruments don’t really do it for you. We’ll help you discover those hidden talents and passions deep inside of us.

I’ve had a glimpse of that future over the last few months as I observed our incredible team of teachers and therapists at the Rising Start in South Florida.  I am a board member of the Rising Start (TRS), a very special learning and therapy center for youth and young adults on the Autism Spectrum, and I have had the privilege of working with Maria Alejandra Mejia, Founder & Clinical Director, and her wonderful team, starting to visualize that future and taking initial steps in that direction.

The statistics for life outcomes of our Autistic population such as post-secondary education, employment and personal independence are depressingly dismal.   Unemployment for young adults on the Spectrum exceeds ten times the rate of the general population.  Frustratingly, unemployment is five times higher than for other disability categories!  Over 65% do not pursue post-secondary education or training and more than 80% never live independently.  All of this despite enormous resources being dedicated to early intervention (pre-school and elementary grades) with specialized therapies and learning strategies as well as numerous young adult and adult programs dedicated to career and employment training.

Training and employing our future culinary & hospitality entrepreneurs and employees.

Our first steps towards chipping away at this challenge includes the creation of The Rising Start Center For Neurodiverse Innovation & Entrepreneurship.  The Center is introducing two new initiatives to add to their existing programs. First, is our TRS Social Enterprise Food Truck Project https://www.therisingstart.org/trs-food-truck-project.  This is an entrepreneurial venture, owned and operated by The Rising Start and we won’t stop at just training our TRS Food Truck Associates and sending them off to pursue their futures, we will actually provide transitional, fully paid employment to prepare them for that brighter future with real hands-on experience and important credentials for their resumes.

Nurturing the unique ideas and experiences of our Neurodivergent community to create new products, services and businesses.

The second initiative will be the launching of the TRS Incubator For Innovation & Entrepreneurship.  We are starting with a program serving South Florida students up to age 22 and their families. Later we will add a program for young adults 22+.

The Incubator will offer courses and workshops in innovation and entrepreneurship, an E-ship Lab to create and test products, business and service models and host a showcase for each cohort including seed money for the most promising ideas.  A critically unique component of the program’s design will be the requirement that the neurodivergent individual team up with at least one family member and friends to build a start-up team, all of whom will be eligible to utilize the Incubator's resources.

We are very excited about these initiatives.  They are innovative, providing a genuinely alternative future path for our Neurodiverse community, but we can’t do this by ourselves.  We need our broader community’s help in terms of raising funds, volunteering for various roles, including entrepreneur mentor, instructors and potential partners. If this strikes you as something that's important for our community and you want to be part of, please contact us at info@risingstart.org or visit; www.therisingstart.org.