The new Snack Shack at Town Hall will not only serve up affordable, nutritious foods, it will offer employment to people with disabilities.
Opening Friday in the first-floor lobby of the Edison municipal complex, 100 Municipal Blvd., the Snack Shack will serve breakfast, lunch and snacks to municipal employees and Town Hall visitors Tuesdays through Fridays.
The township has teamed up with the Edison-based New Jersey Institute for Disabilities (NJID) to operate the Snack Shack.
“Municipalities and other governmental bodies are stepping up to the plate, too, and programs like Edison’s Snack Shack offer a tremendous opportunity for people with disabilities to join the workforce,” said Daniel Baker of the Boggs Center on Developmental Disabilities at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.
He said awareness is growing nationwide about people with disabilities as an untapped pool of quality employees.
Two Edison residents and one Woodbridge resident, all seeking careers in food service, have signed on to work at the Snack Shack.
Personal job coaches, who are paid with funds that the employees receive from the New Jersey Division of Vocational Rehabilitation (DVR), will accompany the three Snack Shack employees to work. Jagruti Patel, NJID’s director of Adult Community Support Services, will supervise the program.
Baker said NJID will ensure that the right kind of support and training are provided. He said Edison will benefit from a terrific service.
“This type of thinking needs to happen across New Jersey,” he said.
NJID collaborates with other nonprofit service agencies and private businesses to provide supported employment for people with disabilities. Its new relationship with Edison represents NJID’s first job-creation endeavor with a government entity, said Venus D. Majeski, the institute’s director of community relations. Majeski said the administration of Edison Mayor Thomas Lankey has demonstrated a commitment to community-based employment for people with disabilities.
“NJID hopes this will become a model for future partnerships in other New Jersey communities,” Majeski said.
Lankey said the Snack Shack’s greatest objective is to offer community inclusion, social integration and meaningful employment to several people with intellectual disabilities.
“I’m very proud that Edison is working hand-in-hand toward these goals with the New Jersey Institute for Disabilities,” he said. “Supported employment opportunities like the Snack Shack provide people with disabilities a secure way to sharpen their job skills and social skills, to be productive in the workforce and to achieve greater independence in their personal lives.” Edison has secured Community Development Block Grant funds to provide an on-site supervisor who will oversee the Snack Shack’s daily operation, Majeski said.
“Community-based jobs like these are essential for people with disabilities. They are real jobs for real wages. They teach job skills, good work habits and personal responsibility,” Majeski said. “Interacting with town employees and visitors can help break down barriers and change people’s minds about how much people with disabilities can accomplish with the proper supports.”
The NJID — formerly known as the Cerebral Palsy Association of Middlesex County — is perhaps best known for its Lakeview School and Treatment Center on the edge of Edison’s Roosevelt Park.
NJID also operates more than 20 residential sites, five adult-training centers, an early intervention program for infants and toddlers, and an extensive network of community services. With locations in Middlesex, Somerset, Monmouth and Ocean counties, NJID serves more than 1,500 adults and children with a wide range of disabilities.