Screening Requirements
On-Site COVID-19 Screening VISITORS and SRC Personnel COVID-19 SCREENING QUESTIONS Screening Requirements Updated as of 04/14/2021. Requirements will change as state and county ordinances are updated. Please ask the following questions and administer no-contact...
What COVID Life is teaching us about inclusion
Never in modern times have we humans experienced the fear of the unknown as we seek to plan for an uncertain future. Now in forced togetherness, even families of moms, dads, and kids, who love each other express feelings of boredom and sadness from a daily diet of sameness.
This is COVID Life.
We long for socialization in wider and more interesting ways. We look back on activities we likely took for granted and wish we were able to do them: to party with friends, nachos grande arriving to our table packed into our favorite corner booth at the taqueria, hugging people, seeing a smile, high-fiving anyone around us in the bleachers, cheering as our team scores.
We look forward to being able to live that life again. Thanks to COVID Life, perhaps we’ll notice in the moment how precious inclusion is. Even though we know it’s for our own safety more of us now are experiencing firsthand that physical, emotional and social exclusion hurts, and like the virus, it will not go away easily.
What if in the name of safety, lack of self-determination, loneliness, and isolation is not just your reality this year, these features describe your daily life? COVID Life for many people with disabilities just describes their extended reality, often for many years.
And now while many of us are experiencing COVID Life, thousands of Nevadans are even more isolated, with fewer activities in which to engage, while parents and providers see funding issues looming on the horizon adding to their COVID Life stresses.
Sounds dire. It is in many ways. After COVID Life, after quarantine, when fear becomes hope and trust, how will we be changed by this experience? Will we find the courage to change what we can? Participate in this time of great reckoning for excluding, labeling, prejudice.
Michael Brueggert, left, and James MacNamara HSI.
Can we dare to expect and take action to support true inclusion in our businesses, in our homes, in our everyday life? Generally, change requires a significant experience that causes us to question what we think we know. If COVID Life helps us glimpse how isolation or exclusion feels can we build on that and start by being kinder?
A question, followed by supportive silence (no foot-tapping, texting) to wait for an answer saying with your face that you are willing to listen with an open mind. Help me understand your perspective?
If there is a kinder question to start an honest dialogue, ask that question. How can I include you more, value your input more, value your ideas, your decisions? Begin a dialogue with first-line staff, with customers, with your leaders, it’s the first step to identify areas of strength and opportunity for a more inclusive anything.
High Sierra Industries (HSI) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. We develop and use learning systems to benefit people with disabilities and those who support them.
You may wonder what you, a complex organization, or small business can possibly learn from us? For over 20 years we’ve successfully pivoted, shrunk, grown, and stretched our business and our resources while honing our success teaching people with different abilities to identify and achieve their goals.
Our greatest lesson learned and biggest secret … people are people first; we ALL have different abilities.
The X-treme Ability Challenge (XAC) is our annual fun-raising event. The XAC was created as a fun, participative way to dispel stereotypes, prejudices, and exclusionary labels used to describe people with different abilities. Participants in the XAC, for just a few minutes, do a task using skills such as using sign language or using a wheelchair.
We’ve taken the XAC to a new level; as employee development to explore your organization’s inclusion culture in a positive and outcome-focused way. Inclusion conversations aren’t easy conversations to have. When were they ever?
What we DO KNOW is thanks to COVID Life more of us have some experience with exclusion upon which to build and improve INCLUSION. What we also know is how to facilitate honest dialog, do data analysis and provide actionable recommendations.
Whether you have us help you or not, you can lead an inclusion dialogue, ask questions, dig deeper and identify opportunities to create a more inclusive work environment where your employees, the people YOU support, can’t wait to contribute every day!
Be a catalyst to a conversation of inclusivity in your organization, to learn more about the XAC, please call LaVonne at 775-771-2494 or Jimmy Breslin at 775-846- 8008 or visit hsireno.org/XAC.
This article was originally posted on the Northern Nevada Business Weekly’s Non-Profit Spotlight.
In Memory of Sparks Mayor Ron Smith
Photo Credit: Gwinn Nelson
In addition to appreciating his service to the community he loved, Ron was our friend. He served for almost four years as our Government Liaison Officer, overseeing contracts providing people with disabilities well-paying jobs. We were privileged to get to know him and work with him. Heartfelt sympathies to Ron’s family, many friends, and colleagues.
On behalf of us at HSI-WARC,
LaVonne Brooks
iCelerate – High Sierra Industries assembles and donates 600 face shields to Washoe County School District to help teachers and students
Pictured: Michael Brueggert (left) and James MacNamara of High Sierra Industries, Inc. represent many HSI employees responsible for making more than 600 face shields donated to Washoe County schools.
Jimmy Breslin, HSI Community Development Officer, with the help of Kurt Thigpen, incoming WCSD Board of Trustee member, delivering 600 face shields to Washoe County School District’s Administration Office.
iCelerate – High Sierra Industries (HSI) has been long-time professional partners with the school district by providing professional development training for the special education department and teacher aids. HSI provides learning methods and positive techniques using behavioral reinforcement for students with Individualized Education Programs (IEPs).
“Learners use a variety of senses when absorbing information. The face shields provide an extra layer of protection for educators and students throughout the day during in-person learning,” says LaVonne Brooks, CEO iCelerate – High Sierra Industries.
“I am so grateful to HSI for this donation,” says Kurt Thigpen, incoming WCSD Board of Trustees. “I’ve talked to many teachers and students who were asking for face shields and I know this donation is going to put a lot of minds at ease and keep folks safe.”
Team members with HSI’s iWork job training and employment program cut and assembled the 600 face shields. While practicing safe workplace protocols, in addition to our contract work, HSI also found a way to give back and help our community, most importantly, to those students and teachers to help keep them safe while they teach and learn.
Thanks to a grant from The Nell J. Redfield Foundation, we were able to purchase the raw materials for making the face shields. They were delivered to the Washoe County School District who will distribute them.
Pictured: Kurt Thigpen, Trustee-Elect for Washoe County School Board