this is so beautiful it is yeah and then Oh and this is be you yeah be you i came up with I came up with a be you one you did and then Yeah you're so creative i love that something in the front now you blank not blank no i think that's smart this is so lovely and it's soft too it's very nice you're going to sell a lot of these i think the De Mo Foundation is a nonprofit organization started about 8 to nine years ago uh dedicated to creating employment opportunities for young adults with unique abilities uh we partner with a variety of industries and companies in Miami Dade Broward uh also now in Monroe and hopefully in the future Hillsboro County and it all started because of my mom and my brother it has been a lot of fun you know um growing up with him it's been very adventurous it's been very humbling but can be um struggling at times but it was also kind of the I'm supposed to be here situation i was built for that can you talk a little bit about what some of those challenges were maybe some of those unique situations that you had to deal with growing up but also what you saw your parents going through we didn't view them as as obstacles uh you know we view them as just a journey my mom um was an ultimate advocate from day one and she actually had her bachelor's in chemistry and was an RN she still has her nursing license and as she discovered things that were going on with with my brother she went back to school and got her masters in special education uh from the University of Miami she then dove in into the education system and was making sure that he was going to be included in the world and all of our entire family said "All right this is this is how we push the needle forward."

This is our mindset and this is our mindset there there are no ceilings um we expect more right not just from ourselves but from him because when a high-end doctors tell you your son is going to need roundthe-clock care she said "No absolutely not we're going to do everything possible to make sure that he is as independent as possible."

And look where he's come oh absolutely it It's leaps and bounds um there are everyday obstacles of course but compared to what we were told it's night and day it's a complete 180 this is your shop yeah my shop this is your office this is your shopping my office my shop my desk i do I do email i write um I send I say I welcome there to new people who join the financing for them to hop on some classes we have on Google meets i teach one it's our sport club tomorrow absolutely there is a timeline of education and care for these young people and they get to a certain point and then it's like okay you're on your own after 22 unfortunately these services just fall off uh and that's where the De Mo Foundation really pick comes into play because we're there right after that you can go to vocational rehab you can open a case with the demo foundation and we can start the process of looking at the outcomes for employment we have a very detailed model and a very detailed process that helps not just finding employment but also the independent living skills that surround employment after vocational rehab does their outcomes then we go into pre-employment training that pre-employment training is conducted by our mental health counselor that is on staff Kidad that really helps them figure out what they want to do and what they're good at and really assess those unique abilities so it's not just placement it's career exploration it's careerdriven when a young person comes in and they're starting what are what's the training that you provide for them i provide sessions to the participants of our program um if they're feeling depressed or anxious experiencing grief um they typically meet with me our pre-employment training is going to consist of anything really that has to do with the workplace right so we're talking about resume building interview skills workplace etiquette conflict resolution transportation stress management internet safety do 20 hours with me and then they do 20 hours with the job coach the job coach is going to teach the participant in a way that the participant is going to understand um and and also I think put in place accommodations that really help them do their job right those accommodations can be things like visuals checklists reminders task analysis they are an integral part of this process correct and and and they never stop so let's say that an employee has been working for a year they're completely independent um and so the employer says "Well we want to take this person to full-time um and we want to teach them as additional task."

We then go in again we learn those tasks and then we teach it to the young adult the job coach is not only providing support to the young adult but also to the staff how do I go about you know speaking to this person about this topic or this issue can you help me um manage this situation talk about your employer partners how many of them do you have and are you trying to grow that base of partnerships we have over 80 uh in Miami Dade uh Broward um and a couple in Monroe County and getting employer partners is one of our biggest challenges and we have phenomenal employer partners um from Baptist that hired 29 young adults um all the way to Summit Aerospace which uh has five young adults all these employer partners they bought in and when you buy in to the program and you see the amount of support that we do give them you'll see that it is a win-win in the end uh but it's not just placing young adults anywhere we need more and more businesses willing to open the door to bringing in a uh individual who has a unique ability because they want to do something special they want to do something that they love and when we find the right match that will yield long-term success um the Oliver Patch Project is a program um for pediatric cancer uh kids that are in um that are currently going through treatment we make jackets and totes and send them patches every month of support um just letting them know that belong to a community and they're not alone hector is magic hector is one of the most amazing individuals that you could ever imagine you know not only is he efficient and effective and specific he's one of the most amazing talented artists that we've ever met hector's like super important because he does the things that you know we do a lot of patches and cards every month so from what people might view as mundane tasks to really creating designs that we've then taken and had made into animations and made into patches he's working all these sticker designs he's so precise in what he does like I don't really have to worry about checking him like I've double checked his stuff too and it's just fantastic like out of everybody I've ever worked with I'm very happy to have him on my side because he's like my sidekick and what we started introducing was using his creative talent we're like you know kind of bringing in something more that is aligned to what he likes and what his talent and what he's really good at so he's been drawing our characters in like his style lately and it's gorgeous and he gets so excited like you can feel the energy come off of him when he's like "Let me show you what I just did i just finished this one."

And it's just it's brightened our days every day Hector walks in it's like a breath of fresh air for us and kind of puts things in perspective yeah they're uniquely individual and amazing but that's what makes them who they are and kind of what adds to what we do here at Oliver Patch Project for sure talk about your designs right now I'm redesigning the characters that they already have here in Oliver Patch which is original to them and uh in in my spare time I like designing characters for my own animation studio uh which I'm planning on opening for the future called Hector Studios how does creating make you feel it makes me feel like I could uh I could uh do big things in the future and uh I feel kind of special in a way mhm well because your designs are they are special it's like it's a part of you uh to me my original characters are like are like my children that's wonderful and then all the work that you're doing and working for the Oliver uh patch project do you feel that it's given you a lot of independence that you can kind of do anything you set your mind to how many um young people who are on the spectrum or neurode divergent have you placed in employment we have placed uh over 80 young adults on the spectrum within employment that are working 20 to 40 hours a week wow uh some over 5 years of employment at the same business wow which is unheard of and that's just within the ASD community wow you know so we um have lots of young adults also on the waiting list we have about 80 on the waiting list and within Miami Dade County so we are looking for employer partners you know desperately i got you so they're on the waiting list for employment yes yeah are they already trained or you haven't even started that process oh they are trained oh so they're ready to go they're ready to go talk about the family support and having the parents really buy in to this idea of allowing your child to be this independent person that maybe they had been told they couldn't be we love all of our parents that get involved uh but it's hard to let go we tell parents we're not asking you to do something that we as a family haven't already done because you've lived it right we lived it i've been job coaching for 30 years since the day Alice was born yeah exactly by letting go you give you take a leap of faith you know and you hope that everything's going to work out and sometimes it doesn't along the way but in the end it will when they are joining the Deoya Foundation they're joining the Deoya family and they're not just supported by the job coaches they're supported by our parent liaison they're supported by our mental health counselors on staff they're supported you know by their peers and they can participate in classes they can participate in events um so they get to rely on a full-fledged community of members and they will always have the support of our program ambassador Alex and my brother that is their biggest support and you know he's here for that he's here for them what can the rest of us learn from people who have ASD or who are neurode divergent i would say the the best thing that you can learn is uh a little bit of patience goes a long way and also to expect the unexpected don't expect it to go wrong don't expect it to not go the way you think expect it to go further than you think and you'll be surprised for more about our South Florida community like subscribe and click the video below