Megan Guzman takes pride in the soap, candles and herbal salts she helps create and sell.<\/p>\n
While she doesn\u2019t make a profit, Guzman lights up each month at the abilities wellness shop at the Joan & Alan Bernikow Jewish Community Center of Staten Island.<\/p>\n
The market is a new part of the JCC\u2019s Day Habilitation Without Walls, a program for people with special needs that helps them sell their handmade goods.<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
The wellness market is part of the Joan & Alan Bernikow Jewish Community Center of Staten Island\u2019s Day Habilitation Without Walls program
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Participants are adults with special needs who learn to grow, harvest and make the products they sell
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The program also focuses on helping young adults with special needs build skills, confidence and friendships
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Monthly market sales support the disabilities department and fund future products<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s definitely skill building because it grants them the opportunity to have work-related experience, building vocational skills,\u201d said Drita Popovic, senior director at the Department of People with Disabilities at the JCC. \u201cIt gives everybody the opportunity to shine. And I think it’s very important that every person has that opportunity to build self-esteem, to build confidence, to build friendships, to build a life that they can feel proud of.\u201d<\/p>\n
The wellness market is more than just a sales table.<\/p>\n
Participants grow and harvest herbs, fruits and vegetables at the JCC\u2019s serenity garden before transforming them into products.<\/p>\n
Susan Larsen, the garden\u2019s agricultural project coordinator, oversees the process.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt means everything to me to be able to support them and help them build their lives in better directions,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The program, now in its fifteenth year, helps young adults with special needs build independent living skills and social skills.<\/p>\n
The new market, operating once a month, is just getting started, but is already helping participants build confidence and has brought in over $1,000 in sales. That money supports the disabilities department and goes back into making the products.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Megan Guzman takes pride in the soap, candles and herbal salts she helps create and sell. While she…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":76212,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[2296,2024,25,3691,231,36776,9,24,12,63,134,136,135,27,200],"class_list":["post-76211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-app-human-interest","tag-app-in-the-community","tag-app-top-stories","tag-emma-barnett","tag-human-interest","tag-in-the-neighborhood","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76211\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}