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Podcast Summary:
Get ready to LEAP into summer with Learn, Earn, and Prosper! This virtual program is made just for blind and visually impaired students ages 14–21 who want to gain real job skills, build independence, and make lifelong friends—without even leaving home! Led by Hannah Peach, LEAP offers paid work experiences, career-readiness workshops, mentorship from blind professionals, and fun projects like making websites or interviewing people. You’ll build confidence, sharpen your soft skills, and discover what’s possible for your future. Want to boost your resume and meet cool people? LEAP is your launchpad to success!
Find out more about the LEAP Summer Program.
To learn more about the services available through State Services for the Blind and how they can support your independence, contact Shane DeSantis at Shane.DeSantis@state.mn.us or call 651-385-5205.
Full Transcript
{MUSIC}
Singer:
Learning blindness skills, I’m on this journey, no doubt. …
Jeff Thompson:
Ah yes, summer is coming, it’s right around the corner, and SSB is proud to announce some summer opportunities that are available to students. Whether you prefer virtual or live and in person, SSB has got something for you. And these are programs designed around work preparedness, work readiness, and paid work opportunities.
As well as skill building, soft skill building, and even taekwondo. Yes. And in this episode, we have Hannah Peach, and she is the LEAP Virtual Program Developer. She’s going to talk about the opportunities that students have during their summer program, from job readiness, job preparedness, teamwork, and much much more. And this is a virtual program that you can do from the comforts of your own home. So without further ado, here’s Hannah Peach.
Hope you enjoy.
{MUSIC}
Singer:
Blind abilities.
Jeff Thompson:
Welcome to Blind Abilities, I’m Jeff Thompson. Today in the studio, we have from LEAP, Learn, Earn, and Prosper, Hannah Peach, and she is the LEAP Virtual Program Developer. Hannah, welcome to Blind Abilities.
Hannah Peach:
Thank you.
Jeff Thompson:
Hannah, can you tell us a little bit about what is LEAP?
Hannah Peach:
So LEAP stands for Learn, Earn, and Prosper. It is a program based out of Vermont that supports blind and visually impaired youth aged 14 to 22 to develop job skills and independent life skills to experience different work environments, to make some money, to make some friends. And yeah, we’ve been around for almost 18 years, and we always have fun, exciting programs, stuff to talk about. So…
Jeff Thompson:
Well, it’s a neat option to go online instead of having to leave home during the summer to get a virtual paid work experience.
Hannah:
Yeah, we kicked that off during COVID times, and it was really successful.
So we were able to keep growing and developing and just reaching more blind and visually impaired students around the country, which was great.
Jeff:
What is work readiness?
Hannah:
The way we kind of approach that is like what you would call sort of soft skills.
Skills like responding to a supervisor on time or checking your email every day, using an app to log your time that you’re working, replying, making phone calls, you know, all those little things that maybe you don’t think about so much when you’re working and actively in a career, but take some time to develop in a way that’s really professional and valuable.
Jeff:
And I saw that it’s a paid work opportunities so students can make money.
Hannah:
Yep, that’s correct. Yeah, we have consultants that we work with to develop curriculum and paid opportunities to essentially work on a team and develop a final product. So they work on projects, tasks together, such as like interviewing people or making a website. And in the end, they have something to show their friends or their peers or the parents or just their community.
Jeff:
So they get the work and develop teamwork, leadership skills. Yeah, that’s awesome.
Hannah:
Yeah, pretty great.
Jeff:
So you experienced this yourself as a youth.
Hannah:
To an extent, I actually right out of college, I went into like a part time kind of work experience with LEAP and was developing some of their materials, which was really valuable right out of college. I hadn’t really worked before. So it really helped me develop like communication skills and an understanding of what the workplace is, which was really needed at that time.
So I wasn’t like as involved, I think with the whole community. And that’s a part that I really take a lot of value in now working with LEAP is the community is just probably one of the best parts of it. There’s really great connections and it’s really great to be around people with similar lived experiences.
Jeff:
I was watching the YouTube video and I saw that there was plenty of students on there from all over the place and they’re all talking and it’s just like an easy way to get to meet people. I mean, you’re at home, but virtually meet to them. And then I suppose they get assignments and stuff and work together. And also I saw that they get to meet adults who may be doing that particular job that they’re doing like a mentorship.
Hannah:
Yeah, it’s great. We have a really awesome community of kids. I think it’s really been amazing. just to meet people from really around the country. Of course, we’ve had some students from Minnesota before. We have some students from Iowa, and everyone is coming from different walks of life. So some of the younger students, maybe they’ve never even met another person with a visual impairment. Some of the kids we work with are really rural, so having the opportunity to connect with people and learn from them and be like, oh, this is possible for me is really amazing. We have speakers come in from, blind speakers who have been in different career fields. Just all those lived experiences, kids might not have been exposed to, are really, really powerful.
Jeff:
Yeah, that’s really important to find out what you don’t know. And then when you do see that someone is working in a field, it’s like, oh my gosh, they did it. I could do it.
Hannah:
Right, exactly, yeah.
Jeff:
So do they learn anything about interviews, resume writing or anything like that?
Hannah:
They do, along with the paid work experiences, everyone can go to workshops that we schedule throughout our programming. And often those are really focused on those kinds of skills. So we have interviewing workshops, we have resume building workshops, we have a college essay writing workshop this summer. We have all sorts of workshops around those skills. Those are really important.
So we try to put a focus on those.
Jeff:
What’s it like for you when you see someone come in and then slowly they start developing their skills, gaining confidence and showing their leadership skills? And what’s that, what’s that feel like for you to watch that?
Hannah:
That’s like my favorite part of my job, honestly. That’s the best part. There’s like so many of the students we’ve worked with, they start out really like sort of uncertain of themselves. Maybe they’re lacking confidence. We work really closely with them to help them identify like where they might need support and where their strengths are and really build on those. And then you could just kind of see them blossoming and developing confidence. And as they sort of understand the program, I’ve seen students just like welcoming in newcomers and being like, you’re gonna love it. This is gonna be great. And they’re really supportive. They help them navigate Zoom, help them understand what to expect, which has been, it’s my favorite thing to see is our kids becoming leaders and welcoming in people who haven’t done the program before.
Jeff:
Oh yeah, such a great feeling. I’m glad you get to experience that with your program LEAP, Learn, Earn and Prosper. So Hannah, how can people find out more about Learn, Earn and Prosper, LEAP?
Hannah:
Well, definitely we have our website. It’s a little bit tricky to find since we’re housed under another nonprofit and that’s through resource.
And then we have our little webpage in there, but also our Instagram, we’re really active on Instagram, which is just at Learn, Earn and Prosper. And yeah, just emailing me or Sarah. So mine is Peach like the fruit @resourcevt.org and Sarah’s is skerby@resourcevt.org.
Jeff:
And you can check the show notes or the links, we’ll put them all there as well.
Hannah:
Awesome.
Jeff:
Hannah, thank you so much for coming on and telling us all about the LEAP program and what you got going this summer.
Hannah:
Yeah, awesome, thanks for having me.
[MUSIC starts low and builds]
Jeff:
Be sure to check out LEAP on the web at http://resourcevt.org/leap. And for all the summertime opportunities, check in with your counselor, check in with SSB, see what they can do for you.
[MUSIC louder]
Singer:
Blind Abilities …
Jeff:
To find out more about all the programs at State Services for the Blind, contact Shane.DeSantis@state.mn.us that’s s-h-a-n-e.d-e-s-a-n-t-i-s at state.mn.us.
Jeff:
Be sure to contact your State Services for the Blind, your Voc Rehab, and find out what they can do for you. Live, work, read, succeed.
[Music] [Transition noise] –
When we share-
What we see
-Through each other’s eyes…
[Multiple voices overlapping, in unison, to form a single sentence]
…We can then begin to bridge the gap between the limited expectations, and the realities of Blind Abilities