Jan 6, 2023
In the studio, today is DavidD'Arcangelo, Commissioner of the Massachusetts Commission for theBlind. David has focused on making MCB the best it can be. Learnabout the concept of disability as a qualification, theAccessibility Technology Survey, the entrepreneurial programdeveloped with NIB, and dig into the 32 reallotment projects MCBhas done over the past few years.
David is the Idea Guyandsharesa lot of information in this brief 30-minuteconversation.
Find out more about what is happeningat MCB:
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Speaker1: ManagerMinute brought to you by the VRTAC for Quality Management,Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at atime. Here is your host Carol Pankow.
Carol: Well welcometo the Manager Minute. Joining me in the studio today is DavidD'Arcangelo, Commissioner of the Massachusetts Commission for theBlind. Thanks for joining me today, David. How are things going inMassachusetts?
David: Going verywell. Looking forward to a great 2023. And thanks for having meagain.
Carol: You bet. Metoo. I love this 2023. I have my little resolutions for this year.You know, I really want to be intentional. That's one of my things.So I know I had you on the show over a year ago and we were talkingabout some of your great employment strategies during NationalDisability Employment Awareness Month. And you have had so manycool initiatives going on in your state that I think of you as theIdea Guy. I put you and Joe Xavier from California up there as twobold leaders in VR that we can all learn something from. Now, Iknow you've been keeping your head down and really looking forwardfocused on making your agency the very best it can be. And it alsoseemed like you were having some just really amazing employmentsuccesses for customers during COVID. So now more than ever, weneed to take some serious steps to address the problem of spendingVR dollars and improving outcomes. And you started looking at theproblem when you first started at MCB and you hit the groundrunning. So let's dig in. I know we have lots to talk about. SoDavid, can you remind our listeners about yourself? Where did youcome from and how long have you been at MCB?
David: Sure. Well,I'm a consumer of MCB also, and being legally blind from a youngage. I remember getting VR services back when I was in junior highschool and high school. So that's really my first impression withMCB was as a consumer, as a young man. But since joining MCB in2018, I came over from the Office on Disability, where I was thedirector of the Massachusetts Office on Disability. So when the MCBposition opened up and got an opportunity to serve. And, makinggreat strides for these past five years and looking forward tohopefully more time to be able to get our people employed and helplead our people to more independence and self determination.
Carol: That'sawesome. So can you tell us a little bit about MCB? Like, how manystaff do you guys have and how many customers are you servingcurrently?
David: Sure. So we'reone of the first blindness agencies in the country. We often arguewith Connecticut, if they were first, we were first, but we wereestablished in 1906 with one of our first commissioners being HelenKeller. So we have a long history and track record of providingservices for people with blindness throughout Massachusetts. Wecurrently serve approximately 24,000 people in Massachusetts withall types of services. Massachusetts is a little bit different thanmany of the other states. We don't provide just for VR services,and that's not to diminish VR services, but we also provide what wecall our services or social rehabilitation services and deafblindextended support services. So we serve people who are blind anddeafblind and people with blindness and then additional significantdisabilities. So that adds up. Our 24,000 people and our range ofblindness really is the whole spectrum. So everybody from hipartial and legally blind like me all the way to somebody who hasno light perception at all. And we know from the data that we'vecollected that actually there's probably more people at MCB asconsumers who have visions closer to me than vision, closer tosomebody who has no light perception at all. So we've got some datathat's going to be coming out that I would encourage everybody tolook at. We did an assistive technology survey recently with all ofour consumers that really reveals information that I think peoplewill take notice of because many times people were thinking that,oh, well, your consumers, they can't see, so they're not on theInternet or they're not taking part with this technology. And oursurvey really sheds new light on that. So stay tuned for that. Youcan check that out on our website, Mass.gov/MCB. It's really goingto be an important survey when we reveal these results. It's goingto be eye opening for people.
Carol: Well, cool.Yeah. Shoot me a note when that comes out. I'm really interested inseeing that. Do you also serve individuals like starting as babies?Like because some programs I know do that. We did not in Minnesotabut I know some start very young with kids.
David: Yeah inMassachusetts we serve people from birth to death. So cradle tograve with all of our services and the social rehabilitationservices that we provide are really geared around independence andself determination. So we will start providing services as soon assomebody gets that mandatory report of legal blindness and they'redeclared, which we are the keeper of, that we register somebody aslegally blind after their doctor, their eye care provider, hasprovided us with that record. And then we get the services flowing,whether it's teaching Braille or providing assistive technology,orientation and mobility, training, all of these core services, wereally believe getting those in place first.
Carol: Yeah
David: That's reallygoing to help in terms of VR. It's setting the bedrock so peopleare already independent and self determined and then can focus ontheir career goals.
Carol: Yes. So smart.You've got the foundational pieces in place and early, you know,you're getting at the students early, which is incredible. That isgreat. That is great. So I really liked your getting grounded inthat three part framework. You talk about it and I was reading itagain on your website about the Path to Prosperity is Paved withPerseverance. Can you tell me more about that?
David: Sure. Carol,thanks. Really. I first said that publicly during the commencementaddress that I gave for Lesley University's Threshold Program.Lesley University has a great program for people with intellectualdisabilities where they provide a college like experience. And backin 2017, when I was director of the state's Office on Disability, Ihad the great opportunity to be able to provide the commencementaddress there. And that's really where I first laid out that Ibelieve the path to prosperity is paved by perseverance. Or whatdoes that mean? I think that becoming employed is not a one stepthing. There are many steps on that path on your career journey. Sowe really try to instill in to our consumers here at MCB that thereis no get rich quick scheme. This is not a one click approach likeso many of us are conditioned today through these devices andthrough technology. Just one click in your in. Getting a career,getting employed, getting your job, getting on that path toprosperity takes many steps. You got to hang in there because it'snot easy. If it was easy, it would be done easily and everybodywould do it. Everybody would be a multimillionaire. It takes manysteps and depending upon your disability or in mass commission forthe blind on your blindness, there's such a spectrum. And really wehave to work with everybody individually because everybody is in adifferent stage in life. And some people are aging into blindness.Some people, it comes upon them quickly. Some people have it from ayoung age, some people come to it at mid age. It's so different foreverybody. And we really just want to make sure that people areclear what the expectations that we're going to be with themthrough their journey along this path and that it does take time.All good things come in time. So that's really what the path toprosperity is paved with. Perseverance is about that you've got topersevere. These are challenging things. The very essence of beinga person with a disability. Disability comes with challenge, Itdoes. And so we try to get people to accept their disability,accept that challenge and then help them work through it. And so Ibelieve in people and I believe anybody can become employed. Ithink work matters. I think it goes to the identity of a person. IfI were to see you in the grocery store and we would have strike upa conversation, invariably one of the first questions that you or Iwould ask each other is, Well, so what do you do? And if you'reemployed, you're going to tell me about your job because it goes tothe identity, it goes to who you are and what you're accomplishing.So work matters. Our consumers matter, and that's why we want totry to get them employed, because there's so many contributions inour community that we're trying to bring out for the benefit of ourconsumers, but also for the benefit of society. I really believethat our people have a lot to give and you've got to hang in there.That's part of being on the path to prosperity.
Carol: I think thatis one of the cool things with blind services. It's veryfoundational. All the things that you have to learn. And I rememberbeing at Minnesota blind and just seeing that, especially withpeople that came in that were new to their vision loss and ithappened abruptly. Something happened, an illness or somethingovernight almost, and you wake up and you can't see and everythingchanges. How you read, how you get around in the world, how you getaround in your home and your clothes and like how you do everythingand having to learn all those foundational pieces first and gettingthat acceptance and then working on work skills because you can'tjust launch right into that when somebody goes, I don't even knowif I'm wearing the orange socks with the black suit. I don't knowwhat I have on.
David: One of theinitiatives we've been working on and we keep advancing issomething that I came up with about ten years ago that I've beentrying to encourage people in VR to embrace, and that is theconcept of disability as a qualification. I really believe that thelived experience that our people have to learn to problem solvearound is a qualification in and of itself. Let me give you anexample. If I were to take somebody with good vision and ask themto cross a busy intersection, they probably wouldn't think twice ofit. Right?
Carol: Right.
David: But totake one of our consumers who can't see and ask them to cross anintersection, the skills involved and the intestinal fortitudeinvolved with crossing that intersection. You know what? I wantthat person on my team, if they're going to be able to go out andhave the intestinal fortitude to be able to do that and then thedemonstrated skill to be able to do it, because that takessophistication, if that life experience does not qualify you forsome type of role that deals with problem solving. How manyemployment opportunities are there out there for people who aregood problem solvers, for people that have a solid backbone andwon't just roll over? Right?
Carol: Right. I lovethat you say that.
David: Those arequalifications, those matter.
Carol: They domatter. So I'm just going to say a little thing about me. When wewere in Minnesota at the blind agency, all of the leadership teamand the VR counselors, the staff, you had to go through six weeksof sleep shade training, so you were under sleep shades for sixweeks. And so doing that as a new director myself, having thatexperience, it's just a taste, but we did go to one of ourAdjustment to Blindness Training Centers. We had the experience ofthe classes all day under sleep shades. I still remember at the endof the day, walking out. I had my cane. I was still had my sleepshades on. I'd taken them off and I got in my car. I scared a ladythat was across the street. She's like, That blind lady is drivingnow, but getting that very firsthand experience about that problemsolving that goes into everything you do during the day that is sointeresting and very applicable to the world of work, for sure.
David: Yeah. Sothat's why we're pushing disability as a qualification. We believethat those lived experiences are going to help employers and areally good qualifications for employees.
Carol: Yeah, that'svery cool. Very interesting thought. So I want to take you back to2020. You asked for reallotment dollars, but you had some veryspecific initiatives you wanted to accomplish and in fact, you weredealing with the pandemic and you wanted to figure out your role inpioneering a path forward in a post-COVID recovery. So talk to meabout what went into that 2020 that ask for reallotment dollars andkind of how you framed up all of those initiatives.
David: Sure. Well, wewanted to make the best use of our time knowing that we were notgoing to have the community interactions and be able to travelfreely like we had been doing. So we said, let's study this andlet's come up with some things now, some of the things we had putin motion, some of the plans that we had put in motion were priorto COVID. So it seemed that we were prescient on some of them, likeour ad campaign we did, What's Your Vision? So now we've been onMassachusetts television with our announcements, not just publicservice announcements, but paid ads to be able to get the messageout to employers, Hey, we've got candidates for you and get themessage out to our consumers that, hey, we'll work with you to geton this path to employment. So there's campaigns like that. Butthen we followed it up. Once we knew COVID was in there and we didour Quest for Independence, which is a graphic novel which is aimedat not only the consumer, but people in the consumer's sphere ofinfluence, their brothers, their sisters, their fathers and mothersand guidance counselors and people there so that those people canunderstand the path to employment that we lay out in the processthat we do.
So it starts at pre training and goesthrough all of the steps along the way and we make it like aquesting journey. We made it like kind of cool and try to put it ina format that people of Pre-ETS age would be more apt to buy into.So many of the VR documents are black and white text only smallprint, like who's reading that? Who's consuming that? Certainly nota 15 or 18 year old person that we're trying to get interested inthe workforce. So whether it's things like that or whether it'sstudying Disability as a Qualification that we just talked about ortrying to do some of the other surveys that we put together, wereally tried to make the best use of our time. I think in all totalnow we're up to 32 or 34 reallotment projects that we've done overthe past three or four years.
Carol: Oh mygosh!
David: Yeah. We'vereally tried to make good use of our time and build the catalog ofinformation. And all of this is available to VR people if they wantto visit our website again, Mass.gov/MCB. All of the re allotmentprojects are out there. We have studies on the Built Environment inthe Workplace. We have studies on Disability as a Qualification onAssistive Technology. So many different topics we have data on aswell as these ad campaigns. We did one with Sleep Machine recently.We worked up 16 different types of consumers and interactions thatit's not a one size fits all approach. We really got it into 16different approaches, so it tries to suit all of the differentdemographic areas, and that's a VR approach that we took so manydifferent projects that we encourage people to find out more on ourwebsite.
Carol: I know you dida lot of data analysis. There were a lot of projects arounddifferent data analysis, so maybe talk about one or two of thoseand how you used that data to now kind of inform your programmingor whatever you're doing now at the agency.
David: Well, theassistive technology one is a perfect example like. When I came toMCB and I said, I want to do a survey, they kind of like chuckledand I'm like, Why do you want to do? And I said, Well, how many ofour people have email or how many of them use the Internet? Iremember distinctly without naming names, but some really veteranVR people saying, none of our people use the Internet Commissioneror they don't do this. Well, come to find out that 70% use itdaily. That right there was like informing our programming becauseno longer was I going to allow this myth to be put forward that ourpeople don't use the Internet. That's just not so. Now we've got tomake sure that we're making these sites accessible. So a recentproposal that I've been working on is a registered apprenticeshipprogram for our consumers who are blind. Who better to make thesewebsites accessible than people who are already using screen readertechnology? So we're trying to get two registered apprenticeships,one in making web pages accessible, and then the other for makingother online things accessible apps and forms and documents onlineand things like in the electronic space. So we're working right nowwith the Department of Labor, but we're also seeking other states.You need five states to be able to make a cohort to do it. So ifpeople are interested in joining our cohort, please contact us andlet us know if you want to join in this registered apprenticeshipprogram that we're going to be launching soon.
Carol: That's supercool and very smart and needed. I mean, there's a lot of sites, alot of websites in a lot of trouble because they are notaccessible. I love that you did the Assistive Technology survey.I've thought for years, like the invention of Apple and the iPhoneand all of that single handedly changed just information for peoplewho are blind, visually impaired because that device is accessibleand it was built-in. There's so many cool apps now and things outthere that our folks are using now. I know you also contracted outfor your comprehensive Statewide Needs Assessment and that thatisn't necessarily new. A lot of states do that because it's mucheasier to contract with someone than do it yourself. But what wasdifferent about that particular assessment and how do you use theinformation that you got from that?
David: Yeah, again, Ithink that was the one where we put it out there and the awardedbidder I think was the public consulting group. So they're a prettybig firm. They had worked in other states before. I think one ofthe things that they had worked in was like Indiana. And so we workwith them. Obviously our sister agency, MRC, we wanted to make surethat we were kind of on the same page as well. So I think thathelped and really it helped strengthen the things that we alreadyknew we were doing well. They really came in and were able to lookat that and say, Yeah, you know what, you should probably keepdoing that. Did identify some areas and we've made some adjustmentsas well. And I think now in this post COVID world, we wereprescient that we were trying to already get our people to be ableto work remotely, whether it be our staff, who a significant amountof our staff are actually our consumers also, which were veryprideful in that they'd been remote prior to COVID. And so now thetrends in employment with less and less people in an officeenvironment, we really were again, a little bit ahead of the curvein trying to predict that We think that's where the workforce isgoing. There's going to be more and more opportunities that areaway from an office environment. So if you can work onlineeffectively, that's just going to increase opportunities for ourconsumers.
Carol: Oh, I agree100%. So how has all of this helped your numbers? Like where areyou at today? Do you feel like have things moved up or are yougetting customers back? How about people getting into employment,all these different initiatives? Has it led to some success andoutcomes?
David: Yes, it hasled to success and outcomes. Our numbers are up generally acrossthe board. There's a couple of exceptions, but things we reallylike to talk about is the nature of the jobs that we're able tohelp our people navigate into. And just to be clear, we are very upfront with our people. People like, get me a job, get me a job.We're very upfront with them and say, we can't get you a job. Wecan help you get you a job. We don't get anybody jobs. Ourconsumers get themselves jobs. We're there to help and build valueand work within whether it be any of the networks that we developwith stakeholders or using the existing public systems oreducation, whatever the case may be. It's consumer driven, it'sconsumer informed, and it's consumer driven. We make that clearthat really we're just a partner in this, and it's up to theconsumer to be able to make the final decision. One of the thingsthat I think is very successful is that there's more choice thanever before. I think our consumers were faced with maybe oneopportunity, and if they didn't take it, it was like, all right,let's start all over again. Or, you know, now let's go on anothersix month search. Now our consumers are being presented withmultiple offers, multiple opportunities. That's a really good sign.Another really good sign is the nature of the jobs that they'regetting. We're now going past just the entry level job or the basejob, and we're into more management. Some of our placements are sixfigure placements. These are consumers that many of them have beenwith us for a while, but some are fairly new. So like before, thisis where I think our ad campaign is really helped us becauseconsumers who maybe hadn't approach MCB before are now approachingMCB.
So we're doing our best to reduce thestigma of what it means to join MCB. So many people before who werelow vision, high, partial, legally blind...
Carol:Yes...
David: ...didn'treally feel that they were. Well, I can see I'm not really blind.Well, if you're legally blind, then you're entitled to theservices. And so people with existing track records of employmentthat they've been in the workforce for 20 years and now they'velost their vision. Before, many of them were just leaving. And thenwe would find out five years later, well, I left because I wasdepressed or I left because I couldn't do the job. Now we get tothem more quickly and actually work with them and the employer tolet them know, Hey, we're there for you. We're there to providethese reasonable accommodations. We're there to emphasize the greatskills that you have. So many of these things can be remediated nowwith technology. So we're seeing six figure placements. We'reseeing management level placements. These are all very encouragingsigns. But again, they didn't just happen overnight. It's theculmination of all of these programs working together. And mostimportantly, let me just give a great shout out to our counselors,our VR counselors develop these relationships and work with theseconsumers. And really, they're part of the secret sauce here,sitting at their kitchen table with them and their families andletting them know that we're going to be there with them. I thinkthat's irreplaceable. And you can create whatever program you wantand fund it however you want. At the end of the day, that needs tohappen. Without that, I don't think we'd be having the success thatwe're having.
Carol: I love that. Iknow your PSA campaign was really clever because I had looked atthe ads. Very cool. Are you still continuing to do that? Is thatstill going on?
David: Yeah. So we'relooking at another reallotment project to fund another ad buy.We're going to have a dialogue with RSA about it. I think we canshow that we got results from it and if we can, I'm hoping thatthey'll say that that's a good use of the money. You know, rightnow we've gone through some change. We've had a significant agingof our MCB workforce. We've had retirements of people that havebeen at the agency for 40 years, 38 years, 39 years. So I thinkCOVID really helped in a way where it gave people a pause to beable to adjust. And that's not only our consumers and ourcounselors, but really like the whole workforce. And as a result,many people are saying, you know what, it's now time I've put mytime in and it's time to give it up to the next generation, whichis good. But it's a challenge because now we spent a significantamount of time trying to backfill these positions and likesomething with orientation and mobility. I think one of our O & Mpeople we got from California, another one from Michigan. Sohunting around trying to find talent can be challenging and we'recertainly not trying to raid other agencies or muscle othercompetition out because Massachusetts is the state where the costof living is quite high. We want to make sure if we're gettingpeople here, that they're positioned for long term success. Sowe've definitely been trying to navigate some of that, as I thinkmany of my colleagues can probably resonate with on at their statelevel.
Carol: Oh yeah, thatis the hot topic of the day. The mass retirement and kind of exodusof people out of VR. I know when I was at Minnesota, this is, youknow, ten years ago I walked in the door in HR hands me a listsaying I think it was over 50% of the staff were eligible to retirein the next three years. I just went, what? And they did, you know,people did because people have been with the agency. They allstarted together. They'd been there 30, 40 years together. And theyall went. And then that just got exacerbated by the pandemic.People going out the door for sure. If people are wanting to findyour PSA information, is that also on your website still?
David: It sure is.And it's on our YouTube channel as well. When I came to MCB, we hadno social media. Now we've got Instagram and Facebook and Twitterand our own YouTube channel and all of these avenues that we'vegotten such great input from our consumers and their familiesbecause, yeah, it's about serving the consumer, but it's also aboutserving their families because that's oftentimes the people thatare working with the consumers just as much, if not more than ourcounselors. So it's about empowering the whole consumer. And what Imean, the whole consumer, I mean, it's their extended family. It'stheir spouse or their son or their daughter or their niece or theirnephew. They're aunt, their uncle or their friend or neighbor. Ittakes a village. And we've had good success with that approach.
Carol: Great. Itabsolutely does take a village. Can you give that website addressone more time?
David: Yeah, sure.It's. Mass.gov/MCB. So, its Mass dot gov. Forward slash m c b.
Carol: Excellent!Yeah. Because I know you have a lot of really good stuff out on thewebsite, so I know you are always thinking you don't ever stop.You're on to the next thing. So what's up on deck next for MCB?
David: Yeah, I thinkwe just need to continue to now emerge from the pandemic andcontinue to assimilate so many new staff that we've got. I mean, Ithink of our 130 staff, about 40 of them are new within the pastcouple of years. So there's a big assimilation going on, numberone, but really making sure that our community feels safe to getback out there and independent and self determined, ready to go.That's job one. Is getting that adjustment to blindness, thatacceptance of blindness, continuing to find new consumers to beable to provide the services to. Then once we do that, then at thetried and true, it's wash, rinse, repeat on what our counselors andwhat VR has established so well. It's mentoring and then interningand then interviewing and then getting a job and then stayingupwardly mobile in that job and trying to move up into managementor entrepreneurial. And one of the new things we're working on thatwe piloted last year successfully with National Industries for theBlind is this entrepreneurial program. We really believe that thatis the future for many of our consumers that are interested in asmall business opportunity, and that is establishing an e-commercepresence online where you own your own thing and you're really anentrepreneur at that point, selling products and services onlinethrough their accessible platform.
For years, we tried to get ourconsumers interested in selling on Amazon or eBay or these other ecommerce platforms. But the platform itself, the app, thetechnology itself was not accessible to screen readers working withthe national industries of the blind and tremendous credit to themfor investing a significant amount of their time and resources intomaking an e commerce platform that is accessible for screen readertechnology. This is a huge opportunity for people with blindnesswho are interested in being their own business owner online in thee commerce space. Like I said, we piloted last year. We proved theproof of concept. We have another class now going in. I wouldencourage anybody who thinks they have a consumer interested inthis space to contact national industries of the Blind. Mention thepilot with Massachusetts that we've done. They'll know what you'retalking about and get your consumers enrolled because this reallyis the future and it's a great opportunity.
Carol: Yeah, Ithought that was a super smart idea when I was reading because thatwas one of your re allotment projects was to study it and to lookat it and to figure that out so that can actually be a viableoption for your customers.
David: That's right.We didn't just rush in horns first. We studied it, we spent time,looked around, conferred with NIB, and NIB has done a great job.Like I said, they've really made a major investment here and usingtheir Ability One shops that they've had, they have such atremendous network of providers and vendors that many of theproducts, I think it's about half of the products are actually madeby blind people also. So it's almost like a double win when youreally get down to it. To be able to sell these products online.We're very optimistic about it. Good things start humbly and that'swhere we started. We started with the first class. I think westarted with 12 people. Then it went to 6 because some peopledidn't have the screen reader skills necessary that you would need.Then from the 6,, 3 of them dropped out because they didn't want toown the lemonade stand. They just wanted to work the lemonade standright there from the 3. It went to 2 and then 1 ended up actuallyseeing it all the way through and becoming profitable. So we'veproved the proof of concept. We just now need more consumers. So ifyou've got consumers in your area, let's get them going.
Carol: Well, italways starts with 1. You need one, you know, and then there's 2and then there's 3 and it keeps moving up. That's great. At leastit gives another opportunity. And it really is the gift that keepson giving. You know, when you look at using those reeallotmentdollars, it doesn't just benefit you. In Massachusetts, the workthat you're doing can benefit the whole country.
David: Yeah, I reallythink that, Carol. And if people again go to Mass.gov/MCB, look atthe, again now, I think it's either up to 30 or 32 different realallotment projects that we've done. There's quite a bit ofinformation in there from studies to these campaigns to the Questfor Independence guide that we did, all of these different things.they're there for everybody else to be able to use. If we've hadsuccess, you can just kind of repurpose it and have success in yourarea with it.
Carol: Well, and yourquest to independence. Guide You've been being very modestabout it, but that is hilarious because it's a comic book andyou're the superhero. In it. It is the coolest thing. I thoughtthat was the most clever thing I had seen in that Pre-ETSspace.
David: Well, thanks,Carol. If it leads to one more employment, then we'll bepleased.
Carol: Yeah, that'scool. So, David, I know there's a lot of new directors across thecountry like you were a few years ago. What kind of advice wouldyou give them as they're wrestling with ways to effectively spendtheir funds?
David: Yeah, it wouldreally be, Don't just settle for what has been done previously.I've found the people at RSA to be very supportive, to be willingto listen, and just because it hasn't been done doesn't mean itcan't be done. Find out what your consumers need and then figureout how to backtrack that to these federal dollars to be able toget them the resources that they need to be successful, whetherit's a small business enterprise or Randolph Shepherd or they wantto go to kind of a more traditional route of getting employed,whatever the case may be. There's a program that can be crafted toindividualize everybody so that they feel like the job they'regetting is the job for them, because that's what we want you tospend so much time getting somebody in the workforce. We want tomake sure these people are staying in the workforce, stayinggainfully employed, because again, we really believe thatindependence and self determination, that's the thing that you'vegot to get through so that people can long term stay viable ontheir own.
Carol: Well, wellsaid. Thanks so much for being on the show today. I've been a bigfan of yours for a long time and I just really wanted to get yourmessage out to our listeners and have folks look at your websiteand the very cool things you can do. I know there's a synopsis ofall of your projects so people can get a really good sense of whatyou did and what you learned. I think it was brilliant, so I wishyou the very best of luck in 2023 and thanks for joining metoday.
David: Carol, Thanksso much. You do such a great job. I appreciate you. Thanks foreverybody for listening. And please contact us if we could be asupport in any way.
Carol: Thank you.
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