Featured post

Innovation awards!

Introducing the feasibility of microbusiness for people with disabilities

How can we help the 50,000 or so disabled youth that are unemployed yet burning to find a way to get recognition and contribute? The concept of micro-business is gaining in recognition - and for good reasons! When applied with the right supports (as for all employment matters for the disabled!) micro-businesses support transformative experiences that give both financial freedom, raise self-esteem and provide recognition for the many talents of disabled people!

The screenshot below is a YouTube playlist of learning resources (accessible here) to help disabled youth and their families learn more about the opportunities that they can create for themselves with setting up their own micro-business. The playlist is just the beginning - it includes some materials collected in interviews with parents or youth. If employment in the mainstream workplace is not an option for you - either because you cannot find work or because the social scene in the workplace is too difficult for you to cope with.... there are other options! Look inside yourself and find what you are good at and what you love doing - then explore the option of creating a micro-business around your passion!


Listen to Lawrence, a dad who tells how he persevered until he found the way to help his son Robin create a micro-business to not only assist with his financial independence, but also spreading over his whole life into his social life.




Start: Introducing Lawrence and his family to understand the context in which Robin's microbusiness is integrated. It has to work for the whole picture - emotional, social and financial levels work together to create a rich and fulfilling life for Robin.

8:20 What Role of the micro-business in the bigger picture? The micro-business is part and parcel of Robin's life - for instance his flat is located strategically so he walks to work through the centre of town with a growing network of people that know him.

9:30: What are the roles of the family collective? They act as the extended family structure. Together is easier than with a nuclear family only!

12:12 - Learning from a group of micro-business owners - create your own 'Micro Chamber of Commerce'!! Engaging with the community is built in the life plans!!

13:18 - Do neighbours play any role in the picture? Yes!! Because it is not sustainable to rely on paid support workers.

14:00 Tenpin bowling team - engaging with the sport team AND the taxi company that takes him there and back. A business relationship exists here that spreads onto other areas than leisure. For instance at 14:40 the Tenpin bowling is taking Robin to trips abroad...

14:26 Art - a hobby becoming serious? Create a second business around it.

15:20 Governance circle? Raising the bar constantly!!! What he wants to do is at the core of the plan... but raising the bar is the constant moving part and does not stop!!

16:11 Lawrence draws from his Commerce/Corporate background to help his son. Lawrence relates how he learnt from other families, flew all the way to Capri in Novia Scotia with 9 micro-businesses still working - some of them more than 2 decades! This discovery was an emotional moment for him - he had to break through and understand how his own mental models constricted his thinking!

Permanent link to this post: http://tinyurl.com/Disabled-entrepreneurship