December 30, 2023 • 21 mins
Thousands of people here in Massachusetts who live with autism or other disabilities connect each and every day with Northeast Arc! It's a non-profit based in Danvers that works to link people with disabilities to new opportunities, like job training, social gatherings, early intervention, and long-term family support. Tim Brown, Northeast Arc's Chief Innovation and Strategy Officer, joins the show to talk with Nichole about all the programs and information they have to offer, including their most recent Arc Tank event.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:07):
From WBZ News Radio in Boston.This is New England Weekend. Each week
we come together, we talk aboutall the topics important to you and the
place where you live. It isso good to be with you this weekend.
As we segue into twenty twenty four, Can you believe it? I'm
Nicole Davis. Thousands of people herein Massachusetts who have autism or other disabilities
(00:28):
are getting a helping hand each dayin some way from a nonprofit called Northeast
Arc. Now they're based in Danvers, but their riches far wider, covering
almost two hundred cities in towns.Not only does Northeast Dark offer medical,
educational, and residential support, butthey're also in the communities they serve,
offering socialization opportunities and hands on jobtraining. Here with us now on the
(00:50):
show, Tim Brown, Northeast Dark'sChief Innovation and Strategy Officer, let's talk
all about it. Tim, Iappreciate your time, and there is definitely
a lot going on. Give usmore of a basic rundown. I guess
to start about what Northeast ARC doesand what you offer. The Northeast ARC
is a nonprofit organization supporting people withdisabilities or autism. We support about ten
(01:12):
thousand of your neighbors each and everyyear. Our services range from birth right
up through the lifespan, so wedo early intervention programs. We host the
North of Boston Family Resource Center,the Northeast Region Adult Autism Support Center,
and the North Autism Support Center.We have recreation and social social programming.
(01:38):
We offer special Olympics programming. Wehave a full range of independent living resources,
so everywhere from supporting people to hiretheir own staff and to work in
their own homes, to us owningand operating twenty four hour residential programs.
We have our own home healthcare agencythat works with medically fragile children, supporting
(02:00):
them so they can stay in theirfamily's houses and avoid residential school placements.
We have our day in our employmentservices as well and supporting people and finding
jobs within the community. So we'rekind of like that one stop all for
people within eastern Massachusetts. Even thoughmost of our court services are on the
(02:22):
North Shore, we do have programsand supports within nearly two hundred communities.
Wow, that is a pretty farreach, and I mean, I'm just
overwhelmed by everything you've told me sofar. We haven't even dug into it,
and you know, you want totalk about a big footprint. I
mean, how do you handle allof these different ventures. You've got to
have a lot of support and alot of volunteers. Well, we are
(02:44):
almost seventy years old at this pointas an organization, so we've been around
and what we've done is as we'vegrown. You know, we were started
by families who were not happy withthe status quo and they wanted something different
for their family members, and sothey fought and we're able to get some
community based services. And so whatwe've done is throughout the year is maintain
(03:07):
that truth to that original mission andanytime we find it on that need where
people come to us and needing somedifferent level of support, we try to
create that level for them. Andso as we've grown throughout the years,
we're really growing to what families orpeople who we support are requesting for those
(03:28):
changes. So as we've gotten bigger, we have about a thousand staff members
who work at the Northeast Dark butwe do rely heavily on volunteers as well
to help us with some of ourrecreation, our social programming. We do
a lot of team building with differentbusinesses. We'll come in and do a
day of painting, a day ofcleaning, run games and programs, whether
(03:50):
in our residential houses or in ourday services. We have several active Best
Buddies programs where we're working with localhigh schools and college is to create fun
programming as well. Wow, andyou just wrapped up actually something that I
think is the coolest thing, ArcTank. Now. I am a Shark
Tank fanatic, and I've never admittedthis on the radio, but here we
(04:14):
are. I love Shark Tank.I've been watching since its inception. I
love that you are making this hyperlocal for one thing, but also highlighting
people who normally wouldn't get a chanceto get that special business assistance. So
tell us about Arc Tank. Theconcept of our tank. We had a
donor who came to us willing todonate a million dollars to us as a
(04:38):
nonprofit. He wanted us to beable to do something big and different with
that money, and what was verydifferent as a nonprofit. We decided to
give away that million dollars. Butby giving it away through the ar Tank
competition, we knew that we wouldbe able to benefit the people that we
support, would be able to benefitfrom the ideas that came out of the
(04:59):
Art Tank. So what the artTank is. It's a social innovation contest
where we see big and bold ideasthat are going to help positively disrupt how
services are offered to people with disabilitiesor autism. So we just wrapped up
our fifth year. We have awardednow over a million dollars. This year
we awarded two hundred and eighty sevenfive hundred I think it was this year.
(05:23):
Wow, Okay. And in thecontest it's open worldwide, so anyone
can apply. This year we hadover one hundred and fifty people applied for
our tank, and I use agroup of volunteers to help rate and score
all the application and we bring thetop seven applications together for an in person
(05:45):
day of event. So much likethe Shark Tank, folks come in,
they have five minutes to present theiridea to our panel of experts, five
minutes of question and answers, andthen that day the panel of experts go
off and deliberate to determine who getsfun day. Wow, that is incredible.
Tell us about some of the winnersthis year. So this year we're
(06:05):
really excited about the groups that receivedfunding. We have end Flight, which
is conceived by a mom in SouthCarolina and she has a daughter who's transitioning
from high school into adult services andadult life, and her daughter wanted more
in the independence, and you know, her daughter needed some additional support.
(06:27):
She had autism, She needed helporganizing her day, organizing her shopping list,
what to do, you know,what to cook for dinner. And
so she created an app that allowsher daughter to look onto the app and
mom can create her list of whatshe needs to do, help her organize
her day. She can have hersupport. Other support people in her network
(06:50):
add to the list of create newlists. And so it's a way for
her to be as independent as possible, but for the parent to still have
some level of helpfulness to their child. And that's much needed for you know,
people who are graduating, leaving theschool system and kind of going into
(07:11):
the big open world. They wantto have their independence, but they do
need a level of support, andso this is the least intrusive way to
be able to offer that level ofsupport. Don Hopkins University Center for Public
Health and Digitous Studies has identified thatIndigenous Americans have the least access to healthcare
(07:31):
and that's just the national statistic andresearch also indicates that for children, early
intervention is so important for them andfor many kids to go through early intervention
programs, once they graduate through thatprogram, they don't need any supports or
services for the rest of their lives. So what the school is doing is
(07:54):
developing another app that is using culturallysignificant language in words in order to engage
the indigenous population and be able toaddress that disparity in health services. The
third group is a group of scrappyvolunteers who've got together. They're from Lynn,
(08:16):
Massachusetts, and they've identified that whenyou go to outdoor public events,
so your farmer markets, your concertseries, all of those public events,
there's not a place for people whohave physical disabilities to be able to utilize
(08:37):
restroom facilities, especially if they needassistance in changing clothes. And their idea
was a super simple concept of developingwhat they're calling the Little Bago and it's
a trailer that you can pull alongand park at these events and will have
a changing facility in there with restroomsand so an adult can go on to
(08:58):
a changing table, changing table canelevate and to be respectfully changed. There
will be a sensory room components orfor people who the over stimulation may just
need to escape the noise in theenvironment, will have a safe and quiet
space to go to. And thenthey're going to wrap the little bago with
(09:20):
communication devices so they can also helppeople translate into their native languages for supports
and asking questions. How cool isthat? I mean, these are things
that you know, I've always heardthat, like invention, the best inventions
come from things you didn't realize youneeded. Right, you're filling a void
essentially, and I really appreciate thefact that you at Northeast Talk, you're
(09:43):
opening up these ideas that none ofus who are you know, more able
than others, would think about.You go to say the hatshell for fourth
of July, right, I mean, forget about it. You're barely getting
a bathroom anyway. But you know, it's over stimulating. There's so much
going on, and with so manypeople out there with sensory you know,
sensory concerns, it would be sonice just to have five minutes in a
(10:05):
room just to not hear anything andjust have that time. No exactly,
and even though they're only developing thatthere's one trailer. Their goal is to
be able to build up the trailer, run it for a year, figure
out what works well and what needschanges, and then be able to redesign
it and share it out with anyother community who wants it. Their goal
(10:26):
is to make you know, theother three hundred and fifty towns in Massachusetts,
plus the rest of New England andacross the country accessible for people who
need some additional support, especially inthese outdoor community activities. Accessibility is so
much easier than I think people thinkit is, because when you hear the
word accessibility, you might think,oh, we have to put in all
(10:48):
this stuff and all these rams andall this, and it's like, accessibility
is not always what I think westereotypically thought it was well, and I
also think that people need to Andwhat this group has done is they've looked
at it's not just accessibility, it'sinclusivity. So public buildings and public outdoor
activities meet accessibility standards by the ADA. Having a bathroom facility that somebody in
(11:15):
a wheelchair can access and be ableto be respectfully changed is not part of
the ADA. So an inclusive communitywould want to have that provided. Wow,
no kidding. So let's talk aboutsome of the business ventures that you
have going on over at Northeast Dark. Breaking Grounds has had quite the year.
You've had a fire, You've hadto do some reconstruction. What's the
(11:39):
latest over Breaking Grounds? So BreakingGrounds is our downtown coffee shop right on
Main Street and Peabody. We startedthis coffee shop and it was a true
partnership with the city of Peabody andit's about seven years old now and the
city was looking to revitalize our downtownarea and all research indicated that you needed
(12:01):
to have a hip fund coffee shopdown there in order to be able to
do that. They had worked fora couple of years to try to find
a vendor to move in and operatethat coffee shop and were not successful in
finding someone. And it literally wasa joke text from the director of Community
Development to myself saying, doesn't NortheastDark need a coffee shop? When we
(12:22):
thought about that, we were like, actually, we do. At that
same time, seven years ago,there was a workforce issue in the restaurant
industry. There was an article thatwas in the Globe. Three of our
biggest supporters who are restaurants were unableto do expansion plans because they couldn't hire
entry level positions. We had alsobeen working with a group of students who
(12:46):
were transitioning from school into adult services, and a lot of them had an
interest in working in food or customerservice areas but didn't have any experience.
We develop Breaking Grounds as a wayto address the needs of the city of
Peavity, but also to provide handson training for young adults with disabilities or
(13:09):
autism so they can kind of feeland understand what working in the food service
and customer service industry is. Like, folks can go in and they're learning
the front of the house, theback of the house, how do you
use a register, making espresso drinks? And determining is food service really what
you want to do. One ofthe first things you learn is working in
(13:31):
a restaurant is very different than goingout to eat it. You know,
often we picked careers on something thatwe think is going to be fine,
so we can actually help them determineif this is a career that they want
to do before they get hired andthen feel like, you know, they
failed it if they don't like thatposition. But we've been able to graduate.
(13:52):
I think it's nearly seventy people throughthe program over the last seven years
have all gotten jobs within food orcustomer service industries. This summer. It's
in a multi unit building. There'sapartments above us, stores on either side,
and in the springtime, the thirdfloor apartment directly above us had a
(14:16):
small fire in the apartment. Thankfully, the fire was put out almost immediately
because of you know, due tothe sprinkler systems, and there was you
know, no one was injured,no one was hurt, but if you've
ever been three floors below a sprinklersystem, we became the funnel and received
all the water damage from that sprinklersystem and we had to close for about
(14:39):
ninety days and completely remodel the shop. What Northeast Ark was able to do
during that time period, it's onereconfirm our commitment. We could have walked
away from breaking grounds and we realizedit's way too important program in business and
downtown pepeting for the people we support, and so we were able to rededicate
ourselves to really think about that andsay, yeah, we're going to continue
(15:01):
this. We were able to maintainemployment for all the staff who were in
breaking grounds and allowed them to pickother programs to work in temporarily so they
were able to maintain their health insuranceand their salaries. The people who were
in the program being trained, wejust gave them other options of other programs
(15:22):
so we can maintain their supports andstill allowed them all to come together on
a weekly basis. During that closuretime, we got to do a complete
refresh which was kind of nice,so that space looked better than ever nice.
It's right, it's cheering, andit's such a welcoming place for people
in the community to go to ohMan And I'm assuming that the customers have
(15:43):
come back even probably more so nowthan there were before. I think it
took us being closed for ninety daysfor people to realize how much they missed
us in the community. You know, we've always had such great support from
our neighbors, but foot traffic andcustomers have increased since we reopened. That's
wonderful. And of course you've gotparcels over in the Liberty Tree Mall.
(16:04):
You've got so many different artists andthis is not just like you mentioned.
You have a worldwide touch here whenit comes to Northeast Dark you serve so
many communities with parcels. You arehelping artists and artisans from all over the
world get access to a whole differentmarket. Back in twenty twenty, we
signed a lease for twenty six thousandsquare feet at the Liberty Tree mall and
(16:27):
Danvers and our goal was to movesome programs and offices within a mall space
and so people can access our servicesdirectly from public transportation. While they're walking
through the mall doing shopping and errands. They could see the Sinluss Northeast dark
and be like, I need myfamily member needs, my friend needs this
(16:48):
type of support. They can walkright in and be able to speak to
a professional and get signed up withsome sort of level of support that they
would need while they're going through processes. We also moved to our you know,
some of our pre employment and employmentprograms into the mall space, and
that was exciting because it allowed peoplewho you are, coming out of school,
(17:11):
who aren't really sure of what typeof jobs they want to do.
You know, we have relationships withall the mall stores and they can walk
in and talk to store owners andstore managers and find out what it takes
to work there. You know,there's a restaurant here, or a couple
of restaurants, there's some retail opportunities, so people can walk in and explore
what skills they need to work onin order to get a position there.
(17:34):
Part of our arrangement with the mallwas to open up something that would directly
impact their customers on a daily basis, and what we decided to do was
to open up Parcels, which isa gift shop where we're supporting over one
hundred and thirty individual artists, entrepreneursor social enterprises around the world. Exclusively
(18:00):
sell products that are made by peoplewith disabilities or autism. So every product
in the store is created or sourcedfrom a business owned by a person with
a disability or autism. When wewere looking for products for the store,
what we try to do is recreateevery downtown had that one store you could
(18:21):
walk into if you needed to buya gift for someone and you didn't know
what to get them, you couldwalk into that downtown store and you would
find that perfect item that you neverknew you were looking for. So we've
laid out the store. We've gotpottery, we've got handblown glass items,
we've got a whole cat section,infant clothing, bed and bath, a
(18:45):
lot of home good stuff, fineart, and then reproduction arts, pillows,
dishclows, a little bit of everything. I guess my big question is
if somebody is listening and they wantto support you. Are you looking for
volunteer? Are you looking for donations? Are you looking for both? What
is it that people can do tohelp better support Northeast Dark So right to
(19:07):
our website any hyphen Arc dot org. Okay, there are forms right there
for volunteers and forums right there tohelp donate and support our mission. Many
of the programs and opportunities that weprovide are completely driven through donations parcels.
A lot of that got started asa business got started through donations. Breaking
(19:30):
Grounds was formed through donations. Bothof those business operate slowly on sales and
don't receive state funding to operate them. Our recreation and social programs are all
done through are primarily done through donationsas well, in order to keep the
(19:51):
participants fee low enough to make itaccessible financially for people that we support,
and so people know where again parcelis in the Liberty Tree mall and tell
us the addresses where people can findBreaking Grounds, You've got a black Box
theater, you've got the Parcels store. Where can they find all these places?
The easiest way to start is lookingat our website. Okay, that's
(20:14):
fair. Any hyphenarc dot org you'llbe able to find all the addresses and
specific websites. So Breaking Grounds isright at sixty seven Main Street and Pbty
directly across from the library. Parcelsis right next to the AMC Theater at
Liberty Tree Mall and Danvers, andthe black Box Theater is located right on
(20:34):
Foster Street and downtown Pbody as well. And again you have a lot of
these services on the North Shore,but you are not limited. You do
offer plenty of services for people outsidethe North Shore. Basically we touch every
community within the four ninety five belt. Wow. Okay, So if you're
listening, say Framingham or maybe evencloser to the South Shore, if there's
(20:57):
something on this website that somebody's interestedin, they should still give you a
call or give you an email anyway, absolutely, and if you go,
you know, if people have aquestion on supports or services, they can
go directly to either our Autism SupportCenter or our Family Resource Center. And
that's really the starting point for people, and those two centers will help either
(21:19):
connect them to Northeast Art programs orif they need a program closer to their
community, they will help them findthat program. All right, phenomenal well,
Tim, I appreciate your time.Tim Brown from Northeast Dark, Thank
you for all you do to helpour community. Thank you for all you
do to just promote inclusivity. Andhave a happy holiday us one the fall.
(21:41):
This is great and great chatting withyou. I hope you and your
loved ones have a safe and happyand healthy new Year, and please join
me again next week for another editionof the show. I'm Nicole Davis from
WBZ News Radio on iHeartRadio.
From WBZ News Radio in Boston.This is New England Weekend. Each week
we come together, we talk aboutall the topics important to you and the
place where you live. It isso good to be with you this weekend.
As we segue into twenty twenty four, Can you believe it? I'm
Nicole Davis. Thousands of people herein Massachusetts who have autism or other disabilities
(00:28):
are getting a helping hand each dayin some way from a nonprofit called Northeast
Arc. Now they're based in Danvers, but their riches far wider, covering
almost two hundred cities in towns.Not only does Northeast Dark offer medical,
educational, and residential support, butthey're also in the communities they serve,
offering socialization opportunities and hands on jobtraining. Here with us now on the
(00:50):
show, Tim Brown, Northeast Dark'sChief Innovation and Strategy Officer, let's talk
all about it. Tim, Iappreciate your time, and there is definitely
a lot going on. Give usmore of a basic rundown. I guess
to start about what Northeast ARC doesand what you offer. The Northeast ARC
is a nonprofit organization supporting people withdisabilities or autism. We support about ten
(01:12):
thousand of your neighbors each and everyyear. Our services range from birth right
up through the lifespan, so wedo early intervention programs. We host the
North of Boston Family Resource Center,the Northeast Region Adult Autism Support Center,
and the North Autism Support Center.We have recreation and social social programming.
(01:38):
We offer special Olympics programming. Wehave a full range of independent living resources,
so everywhere from supporting people to hiretheir own staff and to work in
their own homes, to us owningand operating twenty four hour residential programs.
We have our own home healthcare agencythat works with medically fragile children, supporting
(02:00):
them so they can stay in theirfamily's houses and avoid residential school placements.
We have our day in our employmentservices as well and supporting people and finding
jobs within the community. So we'rekind of like that one stop all for
people within eastern Massachusetts. Even thoughmost of our court services are on the
(02:22):
North Shore, we do have programsand supports within nearly two hundred communities.
Wow, that is a pretty farreach, and I mean, I'm just
overwhelmed by everything you've told me sofar. We haven't even dug into it,
and you know, you want totalk about a big footprint. I
mean, how do you handle allof these different ventures. You've got to
have a lot of support and alot of volunteers. Well, we are
(02:44):
almost seventy years old at this pointas an organization, so we've been around
and what we've done is as we'vegrown. You know, we were started
by families who were not happy withthe status quo and they wanted something different
for their family members, and sothey fought and we're able to get some
community based services. And so whatwe've done is throughout the year is maintain
(03:07):
that truth to that original mission andanytime we find it on that need where
people come to us and needing somedifferent level of support, we try to
create that level for them. Andso as we've grown throughout the years,
we're really growing to what families orpeople who we support are requesting for those
(03:28):
changes. So as we've gotten bigger, we have about a thousand staff members
who work at the Northeast Dark butwe do rely heavily on volunteers as well
to help us with some of ourrecreation, our social programming. We do
a lot of team building with differentbusinesses. We'll come in and do a
day of painting, a day ofcleaning, run games and programs, whether
(03:50):
in our residential houses or in ourday services. We have several active Best
Buddies programs where we're working with localhigh schools and college is to create fun
programming as well. Wow, andyou just wrapped up actually something that I
think is the coolest thing, ArcTank. Now. I am a Shark
Tank fanatic, and I've never admittedthis on the radio, but here we
(04:14):
are. I love Shark Tank.I've been watching since its inception. I
love that you are making this hyperlocal for one thing, but also highlighting
people who normally wouldn't get a chanceto get that special business assistance. So
tell us about Arc Tank. Theconcept of our tank. We had a
donor who came to us willing todonate a million dollars to us as a
(04:38):
nonprofit. He wanted us to beable to do something big and different with
that money, and what was verydifferent as a nonprofit. We decided to
give away that million dollars. Butby giving it away through the ar Tank
competition, we knew that we wouldbe able to benefit the people that we
support, would be able to benefitfrom the ideas that came out of the
(04:59):
Art Tank. So what the artTank is. It's a social innovation contest
where we see big and bold ideasthat are going to help positively disrupt how
services are offered to people with disabilitiesor autism. So we just wrapped up
our fifth year. We have awardednow over a million dollars. This year
we awarded two hundred and eighty sevenfive hundred I think it was this year.
(05:23):
Wow, Okay. And in thecontest it's open worldwide, so anyone
can apply. This year we hadover one hundred and fifty people applied for
our tank, and I use agroup of volunteers to help rate and score
all the application and we bring thetop seven applications together for an in person
(05:45):
day of event. So much likethe Shark Tank, folks come in,
they have five minutes to present theiridea to our panel of experts, five
minutes of question and answers, andthen that day the panel of experts go
off and deliberate to determine who getsfun day. Wow, that is incredible.
Tell us about some of the winnersthis year. So this year we're
(06:05):
really excited about the groups that receivedfunding. We have end Flight, which
is conceived by a mom in SouthCarolina and she has a daughter who's transitioning
from high school into adult services andadult life, and her daughter wanted more
in the independence, and you know, her daughter needed some additional support.
(06:27):
She had autism, She needed helporganizing her day, organizing her shopping list,
what to do, you know,what to cook for dinner. And
so she created an app that allowsher daughter to look onto the app and
mom can create her list of whatshe needs to do, help her organize
her day. She can have hersupport. Other support people in her network
(06:50):
add to the list of create newlists. And so it's a way for
her to be as independent as possible, but for the parent to still have
some level of helpfulness to their child. And that's much needed for you know,
people who are graduating, leaving theschool system and kind of going into
(07:11):
the big open world. They wantto have their independence, but they do
need a level of support, andso this is the least intrusive way to
be able to offer that level ofsupport. Don Hopkins University Center for Public
Health and Digitous Studies has identified thatIndigenous Americans have the least access to healthcare
(07:31):
and that's just the national statistic andresearch also indicates that for children, early
intervention is so important for them andfor many kids to go through early intervention
programs, once they graduate through thatprogram, they don't need any supports or
services for the rest of their lives. So what the school is doing is
(07:54):
developing another app that is using culturallysignificant language in words in order to engage
the indigenous population and be able toaddress that disparity in health services. The
third group is a group of scrappyvolunteers who've got together. They're from Lynn,
(08:16):
Massachusetts, and they've identified that whenyou go to outdoor public events,
so your farmer markets, your concertseries, all of those public events,
there's not a place for people whohave physical disabilities to be able to utilize
(08:37):
restroom facilities, especially if they needassistance in changing clothes. And their idea
was a super simple concept of developingwhat they're calling the Little Bago and it's
a trailer that you can pull alongand park at these events and will have
a changing facility in there with restroomsand so an adult can go on to
(08:58):
a changing table, changing table canelevate and to be respectfully changed. There
will be a sensory room components orfor people who the over stimulation may just
need to escape the noise in theenvironment, will have a safe and quiet
space to go to. And thenthey're going to wrap the little bago with
(09:20):
communication devices so they can also helppeople translate into their native languages for supports
and asking questions. How cool isthat? I mean, these are things
that you know, I've always heardthat, like invention, the best inventions
come from things you didn't realize youneeded. Right, you're filling a void
essentially, and I really appreciate thefact that you at Northeast Talk, you're
(09:43):
opening up these ideas that none ofus who are you know, more able
than others, would think about.You go to say the hatshell for fourth
of July, right, I mean, forget about it. You're barely getting
a bathroom anyway. But you know, it's over stimulating. There's so much
going on, and with so manypeople out there with sensory you know,
sensory concerns, it would be sonice just to have five minutes in a
(10:05):
room just to not hear anything andjust have that time. No exactly,
and even though they're only developing thatthere's one trailer. Their goal is to
be able to build up the trailer, run it for a year, figure
out what works well and what needschanges, and then be able to redesign
it and share it out with anyother community who wants it. Their goal
(10:26):
is to make you know, theother three hundred and fifty towns in Massachusetts,
plus the rest of New England andacross the country accessible for people who
need some additional support, especially inthese outdoor community activities. Accessibility is so
much easier than I think people thinkit is, because when you hear the
word accessibility, you might think,oh, we have to put in all
(10:48):
this stuff and all these rams andall this, and it's like, accessibility
is not always what I think westereotypically thought it was well, and I
also think that people need to Andwhat this group has done is they've looked
at it's not just accessibility, it'sinclusivity. So public buildings and public outdoor
activities meet accessibility standards by the ADA. Having a bathroom facility that somebody in
(11:15):
a wheelchair can access and be ableto be respectfully changed is not part of
the ADA. So an inclusive communitywould want to have that provided. Wow,
no kidding. So let's talk aboutsome of the business ventures that you
have going on over at Northeast Dark. Breaking Grounds has had quite the year.
You've had a fire, You've hadto do some reconstruction. What's the
(11:39):
latest over Breaking Grounds? So BreakingGrounds is our downtown coffee shop right on
Main Street and Peabody. We startedthis coffee shop and it was a true
partnership with the city of Peabody andit's about seven years old now and the
city was looking to revitalize our downtownarea and all research indicated that you needed
(12:01):
to have a hip fund coffee shopdown there in order to be able to
do that. They had worked fora couple of years to try to find
a vendor to move in and operatethat coffee shop and were not successful in
finding someone. And it literally wasa joke text from the director of Community
Development to myself saying, doesn't NortheastDark need a coffee shop? When we
(12:22):
thought about that, we were like, actually, we do. At that
same time, seven years ago,there was a workforce issue in the restaurant
industry. There was an article thatwas in the Globe. Three of our
biggest supporters who are restaurants were unableto do expansion plans because they couldn't hire
entry level positions. We had alsobeen working with a group of students who
(12:46):
were transitioning from school into adult services, and a lot of them had an
interest in working in food or customerservice areas but didn't have any experience.
We develop Breaking Grounds as a wayto address the needs of the city of
Peavity, but also to provide handson training for young adults with disabilities or
(13:09):
autism so they can kind of feeland understand what working in the food service
and customer service industry is. Like, folks can go in and they're learning
the front of the house, theback of the house, how do you
use a register, making espresso drinks? And determining is food service really what
you want to do. One ofthe first things you learn is working in
(13:31):
a restaurant is very different than goingout to eat it. You know,
often we picked careers on something thatwe think is going to be fine,
so we can actually help them determineif this is a career that they want
to do before they get hired andthen feel like, you know, they
failed it if they don't like thatposition. But we've been able to graduate.
(13:52):
I think it's nearly seventy people throughthe program over the last seven years
have all gotten jobs within food orcustomer service industries. This summer. It's
in a multi unit building. There'sapartments above us, stores on either side,
and in the springtime, the thirdfloor apartment directly above us had a
(14:16):
small fire in the apartment. Thankfully, the fire was put out almost immediately
because of you know, due tothe sprinkler systems, and there was you
know, no one was injured,no one was hurt, but if you've
ever been three floors below a sprinklersystem, we became the funnel and received
all the water damage from that sprinklersystem and we had to close for about
(14:39):
ninety days and completely remodel the shop. What Northeast Ark was able to do
during that time period, it's onereconfirm our commitment. We could have walked
away from breaking grounds and we realizedit's way too important program in business and
downtown pepeting for the people we support, and so we were able to rededicate
ourselves to really think about that andsay, yeah, we're going to continue
(15:01):
this. We were able to maintainemployment for all the staff who were in
breaking grounds and allowed them to pickother programs to work in temporarily so they
were able to maintain their health insuranceand their salaries. The people who were
in the program being trained, wejust gave them other options of other programs
(15:22):
so we can maintain their supports andstill allowed them all to come together on
a weekly basis. During that closuretime, we got to do a complete
refresh which was kind of nice,so that space looked better than ever nice.
It's right, it's cheering, andit's such a welcoming place for people
in the community to go to ohMan And I'm assuming that the customers have
(15:43):
come back even probably more so nowthan there were before. I think it
took us being closed for ninety daysfor people to realize how much they missed
us in the community. You know, we've always had such great support from
our neighbors, but foot traffic andcustomers have increased since we reopened. That's
wonderful. And of course you've gotparcels over in the Liberty Tree Mall.
(16:04):
You've got so many different artists andthis is not just like you mentioned.
You have a worldwide touch here whenit comes to Northeast Dark you serve so
many communities with parcels. You arehelping artists and artisans from all over the
world get access to a whole differentmarket. Back in twenty twenty, we
signed a lease for twenty six thousandsquare feet at the Liberty Tree mall and
(16:27):
Danvers and our goal was to movesome programs and offices within a mall space
and so people can access our servicesdirectly from public transportation. While they're walking
through the mall doing shopping and errands. They could see the Sinluss Northeast dark
and be like, I need myfamily member needs, my friend needs this
(16:48):
type of support. They can walkright in and be able to speak to
a professional and get signed up withsome sort of level of support that they
would need while they're going through processes. We also moved to our you know,
some of our pre employment and employmentprograms into the mall space, and
that was exciting because it allowed peoplewho you are, coming out of school,
(17:11):
who aren't really sure of what typeof jobs they want to do.
You know, we have relationships withall the mall stores and they can walk
in and talk to store owners andstore managers and find out what it takes
to work there. You know,there's a restaurant here, or a couple
of restaurants, there's some retail opportunities, so people can walk in and explore
what skills they need to work onin order to get a position there.
(17:34):
Part of our arrangement with the mallwas to open up something that would directly
impact their customers on a daily basis, and what we decided to do was
to open up Parcels, which isa gift shop where we're supporting over one
hundred and thirty individual artists, entrepreneursor social enterprises around the world. Exclusively
(18:00):
sell products that are made by peoplewith disabilities or autism. So every product
in the store is created or sourcedfrom a business owned by a person with
a disability or autism. When wewere looking for products for the store,
what we try to do is recreateevery downtown had that one store you could
(18:21):
walk into if you needed to buya gift for someone and you didn't know
what to get them, you couldwalk into that downtown store and you would
find that perfect item that you neverknew you were looking for. So we've
laid out the store. We've gotpottery, we've got handblown glass items,
we've got a whole cat section,infant clothing, bed and bath, a
(18:45):
lot of home good stuff, fineart, and then reproduction arts, pillows,
dishclows, a little bit of everything. I guess my big question is
if somebody is listening and they wantto support you. Are you looking for
volunteer? Are you looking for donations? Are you looking for both? What
is it that people can do tohelp better support Northeast Dark So right to
(19:07):
our website any hyphen Arc dot org. Okay, there are forms right there
for volunteers and forums right there tohelp donate and support our mission. Many
of the programs and opportunities that weprovide are completely driven through donations parcels.
A lot of that got started asa business got started through donations. Breaking
(19:30):
Grounds was formed through donations. Bothof those business operate slowly on sales and
don't receive state funding to operate them. Our recreation and social programs are all
done through are primarily done through donationsas well, in order to keep the
(19:51):
participants fee low enough to make itaccessible financially for people that we support,
and so people know where again parcelis in the Liberty Tree mall and tell
us the addresses where people can findBreaking Grounds, You've got a black Box
theater, you've got the Parcels store. Where can they find all these places?
The easiest way to start is lookingat our website. Okay, that's
(20:14):
fair. Any hyphenarc dot org you'llbe able to find all the addresses and
specific websites. So Breaking Grounds isright at sixty seven Main Street and Pbty
directly across from the library. Parcelsis right next to the AMC Theater at
Liberty Tree Mall and Danvers, andthe black Box Theater is located right on
(20:34):
Foster Street and downtown Pbody as well. And again you have a lot of
these services on the North Shore,but you are not limited. You do
offer plenty of services for people outsidethe North Shore. Basically we touch every
community within the four ninety five belt. Wow. Okay, So if you're
listening, say Framingham or maybe evencloser to the South Shore, if there's
(20:57):
something on this website that somebody's interestedin, they should still give you a
call or give you an email anyway, absolutely, and if you go,
you know, if people have aquestion on supports or services, they can
go directly to either our Autism SupportCenter or our Family Resource Center. And
that's really the starting point for people, and those two centers will help either
(21:19):
connect them to Northeast Art programs orif they need a program closer to their
community, they will help them findthat program. All right, phenomenal well,
Tim, I appreciate your time.Tim Brown from Northeast Dark, Thank
you for all you do to helpour community. Thank you for all you
do to just promote inclusivity. Andhave a happy holiday us one the fall.
(21:41):
This is great and great chatting withyou. I hope you and your
loved ones have a safe and happyand healthy new Year, and please join
me again next week for another editionof the show. I'm Nicole Davis from
WBZ News Radio on iHeartRadio.
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