Access to Real Choices (ARC) Unlimited
Judith Voehringer-Herring, Director
Tammy LeBlanc, Human Resources Specialist
Suzanne Broussard, Consultant
PO Box 9610, Orange Grove Subdivision
New Iberia, La. 70562
(318) 364-7215
(318) 364-7215 fax

For all the good work that they do, organizations providing services for mentally retarded individuals in the U.S. -- many of them under the umbrella of national organizations known as ARCs (Associations for Retarded Citizens) -- tend not to be highly innovative or oriented toward empowerment. The reasons for this are simple enough: Services for retarded folks are typically highly regulated and tightly controlled by laws and funding criteria; and grassroots organizations tend to be dominated by parents of the client group, who understandably place a higher value on protecting their offspring than letting them fly.

But not in New Iberia, where 10 years ago the Iberia Association for Retarded Citizens (ARC) set up ARC Unlimited, a remarkable project with the goal of moving beyond “babysitting” and traditional services to a targeted effort to move retarded individuals as far into the mainstream as they can go through aggressive job training, development and support.

As a symbolic gesture, ARC Unlimited kept the acronym but transformed it into “Access to Real Choices;” and they redesigned ARC’s traditional logo of a sleeping dove as a hand releasing a flying dove.

The program enjoyed a few quick successes getting individuals into paying jobs, using a system of “job coaches” on staff who’d help their clients one-on-one, not only giving them job training but working with them to build good habits of showing up for work on time, appropriately attired, and sticking with them in the workplace until those habits were so well established that the individual was ready to go on independently.

But in the relatively rural and rather poor setting of Acadiana, the hard numbers soon became too obvious to ignore: At the rate of placement ARC Unlimited was achieving, it would take 50 years or more merely to place their existing group of clients in good, dignified jobs.

So ARC came up with a startlingly effective solution: It started its own businesses, creating scores of new, paying jobs that filled community needs and that their clients could do well. Taking a pragmatic look at local needs and opportunities, they identified janitorial, horticulture, lawn maintenance and landscaping as appropriate areas, and quickly set up “mobile crews” of hard-working individuals ready to meet those needs, a service that eventually grew into “Earth Choices,” a small business incorporating three greenhouses and a gardening-supply and house-plant shop, all operated in unique quarters created as a living demonstration of “passive solar” and energy-saving design.

A major entrepreneurial venture quickly followed as ARC established a recycling center, receiving such recyclables as office paper, cardboard and aluminum cans, sorting them and converting them to cash. Before long, clothing and small appliances showing up in the waste stream spurred the formation of another small business, “Choices Unlimited,” whose employees repair and sell clothing, crafts and other small items from three retail stores. This prompted the city police department to donate all its found and unclaimed lost and stolen bicycles to ARC Unlimited, which set up yet another business, Wheels Unlimited, where employees disassemble, clean and repair bikes and get them in good condition for sale.

Making this happen is slow, difficult and labor-intensive work, but it pays off in the long haul. In its relatively small community, ARC is now serving 170 individuals, including 20 in training in its Adult Readiness Center (another variation on the ARC acronym), about 40 in sheltered workshops and a primarily recreational “retirement” program for older participants; and a remarkable 118 clients working in the community at stable jobs, some of them at the same employer for as long as 8 years.

ARC gets all this done with a staff of 38 and a very lean $1 million budget, with much of its income coming from state government -- partly through individuals’ Medicaid and state rehabilitation entitlements -- supplemented by foundation grants.

And now, working in coalition with New Iberia’s Southern Mutual Help Association and other local groups, ARC Unlimited is looking at ways to extend its support from retarded individuals to poor people in general. Last year, they created a local food bank serving 14 emergency-food providers, a need previously served by the food bank in Opelousas, La., more than an hour’s drive away. The food bank’s innovative “Foodlink” program, combining nutrition education, recipes written for basic reading levels, and demonstrations, was a near-finalist for a USDA Community Food Security grant last year.

And now, a new collaborative effort called “Jobs Connection” sprung up this year after local non-profits looked on with amazement as local business interests contemplated purchasing billboards and other advertising in Northern Louisiana, seeking to “import” workers to Acadiana rather than looking at resources available right there at home. With the assistance of Suzanne Broussard, an expert on advertising and marketing, they’ve arranged a series of meetings bringing together non-profits, local government and key community business leaders, aimed at selling CEOs on the benefits of hiring locally -- including ARC’s clients. It’s slow going, Broussard acknowledged, pointing out that business executives and non-profit leaders both tend to “roll their eyes” when confronted with each other. But after four meetings, they’re making progress, and have moved outward from working with relative allies and supporters to taking on the more “thorny” executives who’ll have to be converted in order to make good things happen.

“ARC Unlimited is committed to the development of people with disabilities to higher levels of living through work-oriented services and employment in an environment which contributes to their growth and happiness,” the organization’s mission statement reads. “ ... Our ultimate hope is that we will one day live in a society that will no longer label one section as the handicapped, but will accept all persons as individuals within their own capabilities, allowing them to contribute to society as much as they are capable of contributing.”

All the feature stories on @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG's pages are reported and written by Robin Garr, a prize-winning journalist who has visited more than 500 innovative grassroots programs in all 50 states since 1990.

Browse his book, Reinvesting In America, at Amazon.com.

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