Tell Us Your Story. What motivated you to start your business? Why are you passionate about what you do?

We started our business to help students with special needs gain real life work experience. Katherine is an Education Assistant in High School and felt the need for her students to have on the job practice with skills that they learn inside the classroom. Our students learn skills such as customer service, money math, gain POS experience, stock management and order picking. Our hope is to continue offering our services for more people with disabilities to access skills they deserve to gain.

Describe and demonstrate, including metrics, your community support. How do you support and uplift your community, and how do they show that support in return? Minimum 25 words, maximum 2500 characters.

We love being a presence within our community of Langley. Within our local community we offer youth with Autism and disabilities, opportunities to gain work place skills. This includes in the moment customer service and cashier experience. We feel it is important to normalize all people working at jobs that are meaningful to them, and to make this work visible to the public because everyone deserves a chance to learn and have meaningful opportunities in their lives. We want to break down the stereotypes behind disabilities.

Why do you deserve to win the Business Impact award?

We feel we are a very tiny step in the right direction for normalizing providing work opportunities for all. Through the opportunities we create we feel students can add these skills to their resumes and use us as work references when applying to jobs and continue on to work at their dream jobs because that should be a choice for every body.

Tell Us About Your Culture. How are you creating a sustainable and healthy workplace where everyone feels welcome? Provide examples of leadership you show in interactions with clients, vendors, contractors, staff and others.

We are a very small company but our hearts are big. We work with one of the high schools within Langley to offer up volunteer work opportunities for all complex needs students within the school. We want parents to know that their children are capable to learn and that we are fully committed to support them within their learning process. Ways we adapt to fit the students needs are offering voice to text options while using the POS system, we offer alternative seating or outdoor seating while doing POS. We use picture task cards for order picking, so that steps are easy to follow and to allow independence and as needed, we are always with them every step of the way so that they feel supported.