Today we’d like to introduce you to Scott Elliott.
Scott, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
In 1975, ICAN California Abilities Network was founded under the name of the Acampar Organization. The purpose of Acampar was to provide emotionally engaging and relationally meaningful summer camps for adults and children with developmental disabilities. For half a decade, Acampar facilitated between 8-10 camps each summer. In 1980, Pat Hammond, the founder of Acampar, handed the organization over to Hope Chapel, a church in Hermosa Beach. For three decades, Hope Chapel continued the work of Acampar in addition to providing a couple of winter camps and a bi-monthly Saturday Program with the purpose of taking our clients on an off-site recreational adventure every other week.
While our organization was being run through Hope Chapel, I became involved as a summer camp volunteer at the age of seventeen (I volunteered alongside Louise Elliott, my girlfriend at the time, but now my wife and the co-Executive Director of ICAN). Two years later, I took over the organization in addition to having a separate full-time job. Louise, who was a Special Education teacher and has a Master’s degree in this field, ran the daily operations while we both sacrificed our nights and weekends to expand ICAN from simply being a program of summer camps to include our Social Program.
In 2012, the organization outgrew Hope Chapel and became a distinct entity called ICAN, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization located in Redondo Beach, California. We chose this name because we want to highlight that our clients are capable of doing anything they put their minds to and to focus on their abilities. We serve children and adults with developmental disabilities in the Westside and South Bay areas of Los Angeles as well as in Long Beach. ICAN’s mission is to provide quality employment, recreational, and life skills opportunities for children and adults with developmental disabilities and their families. Our goal is to empower people with disabilities to discover and achieve their own “I CAN” statements, encouraging them to focus on their abilities and to find unrealized skills.
In May 2015, ICAN established Supported Employment services, a program designed to facilitate job placement and job coaching for individuals with disabilities in their local communities. Since then, we have placed over seventy-five clients in jobs. In February 2017, we began placing clients in paid internships. In other words, one of our clients will work for a company at no cost to said company while we pay our client at or above minimum wage with the goal that the company will hire our clients once they’re trained. We have placed over fifty clients in paid internships since developing it.
In 2016, ICAN launched the Day Program (DP) with the goal of helping our clients develop employment, social, fitness, and transportation skills. While at our DP, clients learn valuable skills from cooking to the creative arts, from gardening to volunteering at community businesses, all of which prepares them to one day find employment and, if possible, live on their own. And once we believe one of our clients is ready, we find them a job they want, allowing them, for the first time in their lives, to make a livable salary.
What sets us apart from other organizations with similar life skills programs is that we firmly believe that in order for someone with developmental disabilities to integrate into society, they must spend time away from an organization’s campus, familiarizing themselves with the outside world and gaining employment skills. Because of this belief, 70% of the activities our clients do are off-site. This allows our clients to socialize with the community, which will help them feel more comfortable when they transition into a work environment.
We also launched the Marketplace Initiative in 2016 with our print shop, Print with a Purpose, which was soon followed by our Etsy shop, photo booth, and mobile coffee cart, The Hermosa Coffee Co. The goal of the Marketplace Initiative is to create job opportunities for our clients who may have greater challenges in a regular work setting, and therefore, are unable to find employment elsewhere. Moreover, once clients become comfortable working for one of our Marketplace Initiatives, we have been able to successfully find them employment at a similar business (local coffee shops or crafts and art stores).
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
The biggest obstacle ICAN has faced as we have grown is location. Throughout our entire existence up until now, we have had temporary spaces for our Life Skills Day Program in Hermosa Beach and then Redondo Beach, which we have had to share with other organizations. Meanwhile, our office staff has had to alternate in spaces from Hermosa Beach to Redondo Beach to Torrance. However, we recently acquired a permanent location in Torrance that will house both our Life Skills Day Program and our office staff. Consequently, this fall, we will finally have a permanent Life Skills Day Program in Torrance for the first time since our organization’s existence. With that said, we still have additional Supported Employment offices in El Segundo and Long Beach, but these offices are a requirement for our organization to hire clients living outside of the South Bay. These Supported Employment offices allow us to find jobs for clients residing in Long Beach and the Westside areas of Los Angeles.
Please tell us about ICAN California Abilities Network.
ICAN California Abilities Network’s mission is to serve people with disabilities and their families through life skills training supported employment and social programming. Our goal is to empower people with disabilities to discover and achieve their own “I CAN” statements. We do this through our Day Program, Supported Employment Program, Marketplace Program, and Social Programs.
Social Programs are the foundation of what started ICAN over 40 years ago! Social and recreational programs ranging from day trips to local events to our week-long Summer Camps. We partner with local nonprofits to find volunteers to make these events low cost for our clients. This past year, we had two week-long Summer Camps where we took 118 campers to the San Diego mountains to experience horseback riding, zip-lining, pool time, archery, crafts, Slip-n-Slide, and more.
Our Supported Employment Program helps individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities find and keep jobs. We work with individuals to prepare them for employment, apply for jobs, train at those jobs, and retain their jobs. In 2018, we also added a new class called Job Prep Course. This class allows clients new to our program and clients that are interested in the idea of working to learn about job expectations, networking, job applications, resumes, interviewing, and more. This class is offered in both Redondo Beach and Long Beach. Perhaps the most exciting program this year is our Internship Program. We have placed thirty-four clients in internships this year, and six of those internships have already turned into permanent placements. The internship model allows our clients to gain skills and work experience while the employer can see that they can do the job before hiring them officially. We are excited to see even more clients turn their internships into jobs this next year.
Our Day Program is a weekly program that provides social development, fit and healthy living, community integration, and employment training. Clients select their schedule to help them discover new interests and learn skills for life and employment. We serve fifty-one clients and will double this number as we move to Torrance this next year. Some noteworthy clubs are the Self-Defense club where we teach our clients how to be safe and take care of themselves in challenging situations. Another is Gardening Club where we volunteer at local gardens such as Valmonte Garden, Sunflower Farms, and Queen’s Garden. We also have various clubs that are specifically related to preparing clients for employment, these include Communications, Interview Skills, Coffee Cart Training, Budgeting, Money Handling, and more. We are always adapting these clubs based on client interest and new Marketplace Initiatives that we create.
Our fourth program and the most unique is our Marketplace Initiative. We so strongly believe in employing people with developmental disabilities that we decided to create our own businesses that employ the individuals we serve. Marketplace allows the clients in our Day Program to get real-life experience while earning a fair wage. We have our Creative Studio where clients create wreaths, jewelry, succulent arrangements, and more. This year, they participated in Fiesta Hermosa, Manhattan Beach Hometown Fair, and various craft fairs. They sold over 250 wreaths this year! Our clients get paid for making the wreaths and working events. Together, they have collectively made over $25,000 for their hard work this past year! Our Hermosa Coffee Co. sells coffee at special events, parties, businesses, city events, and more. One of our clients was hired at a local coffee shop this year because of the experience and health certificates she was able to obtain while working at the Hermosa Coffee Co. Our ICAN Photo Booth is growing incredibly. We were recently able to purchase a second Photo Booth, which helped us tremendously during the holiday season. We were able to take on even more events because we had a second booth. We even got to provide the Photo Booth for the Born This Way Wedding!
This year, we are excited to announce that we are moving to Torrance. We have found the perfect building for our programs and have signed a twenty-year lease! This building will allow us to have a home base for all of our programs as well as expand our Marketplace Initiative. We are starting the process of fundraising for our renovation because we expect to spend approximately $500,000. One of the big projects is building out a storefront where we can sell baked goods and coffee. We have wanted a storefront for a long time because it allows us to not only hire more of our clients but also because it allows us to spread the word about ICAN. Inclusion is a mindset and not a program, and having programs that are outward facing towards the community allows us to show the world that inclusion is an opportunity to learn together and from one another.
Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
We have had a lot of unlucky situations that have caused us to persevere and grow as an organization. One of the reasons we expanded was because of the 2008 financial crisis because we saw so many of our clients have difficulty getting the services they deserved. We are big believers in taking advantage of every opportunity, even when it can take a lot of last minute work. We try to take every business opportunity given to us. The parents or legal guardians of our clients really appreciate our tenacity when it comes to providing opportunities for their children.
Pricing:
- ICAN Photo Booth Packages start at $399
- The Hermosa Coffee Co. Catering Packages start at $300
Contact Info:
- Address: 219 N Broadway
Redondo Beach, CA 90277 - Website: https://www.icanla.net
- Phone: 310-374-8295
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/icanla/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CaliforniaAbilitiesNetwork/
Image Credit:
Lindsey Stone
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