When Westchester County first launched its Diverse Abilities Job and Resource Fair, organizers had no idea what kind of turnout to expect. The inaugural event, held at Yonkers Riverfront Library, quickly showed just how great the demand was for inclusive employment opportunities for people with disabilities.
“We had no idea how many people would show up,” says Shari Rosen Ascher, the director of policy and programs for small business and chambers of commerce for Westchester County. “It was overwhelming. We realized we had to move to a bigger space, so we tried the White Plains Library. Now, we have to have it at the Westchester County Center because there are so many people.”
The strong response stands in sharp contrast to the county’s overall economic picture. Rosen Ascher notes that even when the unemployment rate in the general population hovered around two or three percent, the reality for people with disabilities was dramatically different. “In the disability community, depending on the person’s disability, [unemployment] could be as high as 65%,” she shares.
A Job Fair for People With Disabilities
The Diverse Abilities Job and Resource Fair, which now attracts more than 300 job seekers at a time, was created to respond to that gap. It aims to establish a space in which job seekers with disabilities and employers who want to hire them can connect in a setting designed specifically around accessibility, dignity, and inclusion.
From the beginning, organizers wanted the atmosphere of the fair to feel distinct from a typical hiring event. For many job seekers with disabilities, the biggest barrier is not just finding open positions, but feeling like they will be understood and welcomed.
The most recent fair, held on April 15 at the Westchester County Center, brought together hundreds of job seekers, a broad mix of employers, and a large number of resource organizations.
“If you’re a parent of a child with a disability, you get a lot of help when your child’s in school,” says Rosen Ascher. “There is a good support system in place. But once they age out of that, it’s much more complicated.”
By bringing employers, nonprofits, resource providers, and government agencies into one setting, the fair helps people make connections that might otherwise be difficult to discover.
The initiative has been a joint effort in the county, growing out of the Westchester County Executive’s Advisory Council for People With Disabilities, which was established to examine county-level issues affecting residents with disabilities. A few years ago, the council identified three top priorities. Employment quickly emerged as one of the most urgent.
Rosen Ascher, who serves as a liaison to the Office for People With Disabilities and the advisory board, helped link that need to the county’s broader workforce initiatives. After COVID-19, the Office of Economic Development had already been hosting job fairs to help employers fill open roles. From there, the idea of a job fair specifically focused on people with disabilities took shape.
The Office for People With Disabilities uses its existing connections in the community to spread the word to potential attendees. The Office of Economic Development focuses on attracting employers to participate. ACCES-VR, a state agency whose mission is employment for people with disabilities, brings expertise in vocational supports and helps attendees who are not already connected to services get signed up. The Westchester-Putnam Career Center, the county’s workforce development arm, provides support with résumé preparation and other job search tools.
The fair has built a reputation that keeps employers coming back. Rosen Ascher says that some have attended all eight of the fairs held so far because they consistently meet strong candidates.
The atmosphere, she adds, is positive. “The vibe is so different than any other job fair that we do. It’s very positive, and it’s very exciting,” she enthuses. “People are excited to be there. They’re prepared, they’re smiling, they have their résumés ready. They want to tell you what they do.”
The impact of the job fair extends beyond immediate job matches. Rosen Ascher describes how high school and college students attend with teachers and program staff so they can see that employers are actively interested in hiring people with disabilities.
“We had a whole bunch of high school students from New Rochelle, and we had high school students from Yonkers and Greenburgh. We had college students at Mercy,” she says. Teachers bring them “not so much that they’re looking for jobs, but [because] they want them to know that there are companies and organizations out there who will hire them, because this is a population that is constantly told what they can’t do or what the obstacles are. This really shows them what the possibilities are.”
An Innovative Internship Program
The success of the fair and the need it revealed helped drive the creation of a new initiative: a paid internship program for people with disabilities within Westchester County government departments.
Westchester County Executive Ken Jenkins announced in April that The Arc Westchester Foundation has been awarded a three-year grant totaling $816,627 from The Taft Foundation to launch the Partnership for Inclusive Internships (PII) Program for Westchester County Government. The grant will support The Arc Westchester Foundation, Westchester County Government, and AHRC New York City in expanding inclusive internship opportunities for individuals with disabilities, helping to build pathways to meaningful employment and long-term career success.
The three-year grant period will run through February 28, 2029. Funding will be distributed in three installments, supporting program development, county department partnerships, and direct services to participants. The Partnership for Inclusive Internships program will focus on connecting individuals with disabilities to structured internship experiences across a range of departments. The initiative will also provide support to participating departments, helping them build inclusive workplaces and strengthen their talent pipelines.
“Our department looks forward to this incredible opportunity to partner with these highly regarded community service providers in collaboration with our county departments,” says Westchester County Office for People With Disabilities director Carin Horowitz. “This initiative empowers individuals with disabilities to build transferable workplace skills, while also enriching our workforce by highlighting the dedication and talent that people with diverse abilities contribute every day.”
These internships are intentionally varied. Drawing from what the county has seen at the job fair—where seekers range from those looking for janitorial or maintenance work to candidates with advanced degrees in computer science—the program is designed to accommodate a wide range of interests and skill levels. Some positions may involve general office and clerical work, while others might focus on social media, phones, customer service, or parks maintenance.
Departments are not required to participate or accept any particular candidate, and there will be regular evaluations throughout each placement. “No one’s being forced to create an internship, and no one’s being forced to take a candidate,” says Rosen Ascher. The goal is for both interns and supervisors to feel that the experience is genuinely beneficial. “It’s only going to be successful if the interns feel like [it] was a successful thing, and the supervisors feel like it was a good experience.”
Through the Diverse Abilities Job Fair and the new internship program, Westchester County is working to widen the definition of who belongs in the workforce. In doing so, it hopes to strengthen not just the lives of individual job seekers with disabilities, but the local economy and community as a whole.
Next Steps
Learn more about Westchester County’s new internship program for individuals with disabilities here and visit Westchester Catalyst’s website here for information about the next Diverse Abilities Job Fair and additional programming.
Related: Work-Based Learning at Mercy University Offers Real-World Experience
