Finding Solutions: Program helps find jobs for those with disabilities

AIKEN, S.C. (WRDW/WAGT) - Employing people with disabilities is the goal of the AbilityOne Program.

The Tri-Development Center of Aiken County works with the program, offering a number of jobs for the people they serve.

We caught up with a few employees hard at work who are Finding Solutions in being out in the workforce.

You’ll find Megan Brunson working at the U.S. Army Reserve Center three days a week.

“I do janitorial here three days, another site two days. I love it. It’s more work. It pays. I want people to have the courage to go out in the real world and do what I do,” she said.

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Brunson is a part of the Tri-Development Center of Aiken County, a non-profit serving adults with disabilities.

The group partners with AbilityOne, a federal program that provides opportunities for these adults to work.

Rheumel Reed James is with the center. She said, “It helps with becoming more independent and looking forward to coming out, socializing with people, and completing their job.”

For Brunson, she’s able to work and do many things people thought she may not have been able to do growing up.

“When I was an infant, they thought I wasn’t going to make it. I had meningitis. I had to learn how to walk, talk and feed myself. I had to learn everything from top to bottom all over again,” she said.

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She is among six others working under the program as janitors and groundskeepers.

“If they come up and say, ‘Can you help me do the kitchen? Can you help me mop?’ I do it. That’s the kind of person I am that likes helping other people,” Brunson said.

AbilityOne offers jobs in every state, employing more than 39,000 people who are blind or have significant disabilities, including 2,500 veterans.

Brunson encourages others to get out and work.

“It’s amazing. It’s an honor to be working here. There was a time I didn’t think I would be getting an opportunity to be doing this,” she said.