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Shannon Legge has a job, juggles a volunteer position, and dreams of working in the entertainment industry.

Legge, 26, also has Down syndrome.

“I like my job a lot,” Legge said yesterday, following a morning of correctly filing numerous files at Legal Aid Manitoba and doing other work before spending  the afternoon volunteering at a local radio station.

“I like the people here and I like working with people.  This is the best job I’ve ever had.”

Caryl Cockshott, a legal accounts officer with Legal Aid Manitoba, which provides lawyers for people with low incomes, said Legge has become such an integral member of their staff that just like the lawyers and other employees in the office, they celebrated her birthday with a cake.

“We receive accounts and letters from lawyers all across the province who want to be reimbursed for their services and Shannon sorts all of the files for us,” Cockshott said.

“She is great.”

With the goal of creating many more success stories such as Legge’s, hundreds of people across the country involved in finding jobs for people with disabilities have been in Winnipeg the last few days attending the ninth annual National Supported Employment Conference.

Dale Kendall, executive director of the Association for Community Living - Manitoba, said finding jobs for people with disabilities “is always a challenge.”

“The philosophy that prevails is success for one person at a time.  Everybody is different and have different needs and gifts that you can find an employer can use.”
 

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“It’s good for business, it’s good for the individual and it’s good for the community.”

It’s a message that Denise Bissonnette, a California job developer and author of Beyond Traditional Job Development, preaches at seminars and businesses throughout North America. She spoke at the conference this week.

“I would never suggest trying to convince an employer to hire somebody just because they have a disability,” Bissonnette said yesterday during an interview.

Bissonnette said she once saved a company $40,000 a year because she convinced them it would be cheaper to pay $9 per hour to a woman with a developmental disability who can’t read or write than to let high salaried marketing representatives continue to spend part of their day stuffing envelopes with marketing materials.

“Not only did they save $40,000, the marketing people were doing what they were paid for,” she said.

“The job we have is to mine the gold in every person and find the benefit in everyone which will bring profit to the company.”

“The only thing that can account for the present state of unemployment and under-employment for people with disabilities is the lack of imagination. It’s a crisis of imagination.”

Oly Backstrom, President and CEO of SCE, LifeWorks, a non-profit organization that provides support for Legge and about 130 disabled people in the job force, said some of the people can work independently after being trained, while others need one-to-one support which is provided by the organization.

“I say hats off to those employees who look past the disability to see the ability.”

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