Editor’s note: Each week, the San Antonio Report publishes a brief synopsis of the weekly bigcitysmalltown podcast hosted by Robert Rivard, co-founder of the Report.
When Kristian “Krissy” Salinas was growing up in Laredo and attending class at Texas A&M International Univerity, she was not expecting to help lead a nonprofit that connects people with disabilities to gainful employment.
She was headed toward political and policy work more than a decade ago when she started helping her mother, a former special education teacher, find a job for a man who had Down Syndrome. After hearing a lot of “no,” they were finally able to find him a job at a local college.
He was beaming, Salinas, director of Let’s Go Texas, told Robert Rivard in the latest episode of the bigcitysmalltown podcast.
“After that, I was like: I’m out of here,” Salinas said. “This is what I’m doing, and I’ve been doing it since.”
Let’s Go Texas, a statewide nonprofit funded through the Texas Workforce Commission’s Vocational Rehabilitation Program, provides “personalized employment” services for people with disabilities, she said.
Those services include pre-employment courses, vocational evaluations, job skills training, post-employment support and more. Many of their services are now available virtually.
Beyond connecting clients to jobs, the nonprofit strives to teach them self-adequacy, “which is accepting yourself and embracing who you are [including] limitations, skills, abilities, whatever that is” and self-advocacy, “advocating for yourself and then empowering yourself to teach others.”
The nonprofit has also launched innovative programs in public high schools in the area that work with students with disabilities to prepare them for the workplace.
“Through that initiative, we have been able to come into high school [and life skills] campuses … and teach skills related to work readiness, to self-advocacy, to career exploration, to work-based learning … and social skills,” she said.