Brown Bag Presentation: One of the many traditions at Atlas Corps Inc. Within the first month of joining Atlas Corps, fellows are expected to work with their supervisors to schedule to get everyone in the office together. It’s a great way for fellows to introduce themselves and their backgrounds to colleagues. Well, over coffee this morning I got to do my brown bag presentation. My supervisor exceeded expectation and extended the invite beyond our team at BroadFutures.
Our offices are at the National Youth Transition Centre in Washington, DC. All the organizations in the building are mission driven; working towards empowering youth and young people with disabilities as they enter adulthood and the world of work. Most of the organizations in our building and external partners/stakeholders were represented at the presentation. Listening to the different representatives talk about how they all uniquely contribute towards youth transitions made me feel at home and have a sense of shared vision in our sector.
It was a huge honor to have these amazing people doing extraordinary work in one room to officially welcome me to the United States. Sharing my life story; the challenges of youth employment in the South African context and the work I was doing at Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator: Facilitating transitions of young work-seekers into the productive economy was a proud moment for me.
As everyone gave a brief introduction of themselves and their organizations, I realized there is a lot of ground-breaking work that is being done in the disability space in this country. That got me very excited because one of the reasons I decided to take this leap was to learn. Now that I know I am in a place capable of exposing me to several opportunities to learn and challenge myself, I am going to take it all in and ‘broaden’ my perspectives.