INTRODUCING
Partners for Youth with Disabilities, April 2018
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Partners for Youth with Disabilities (PYD) was founded in 1985 by Regina Snowden as a one-to-one mentoring program for youth with disabilities. At the time, mentoring was gaining prominence as a key intervention for bolstering life outcomes in at-risk youth, yet youth with disabilities were being systemically excluded from ongoing programs. In PYD’s first year, Regina matched 9 youth with disabilities with adults with a similar disability—and the demand for PYD’s services skyrocketed from there. Over the intervening 33 years, PYD has grown from this humble beginning to an array of award-winning programs that serves over 400 youth with disabilities and trains over 1,200 youth workers every year.
PYD’s mission is to create a world where young adults with disabilities will be able to live with dignity and pride in who they are, and to lead self-determined lives filled with purpose.
PATHWAYS TO INCLUSION
PYD offers a comprehensive e-learning platform that allows you to learn about disability inclusion at your own pace! The platform includes a disability inclusion self-assessment, online courses, monthly webinars, and networking opportunities with other youth program and workers. Each course takes around 60-90 minutes to complete.
CAMPUS CAREER CONNECT
The PYD eMentoring Platform is fully inclusive online mentoring platform designed by Partners for Youth with Disabilities and Thunder Media. It is available for use by organizations that would like an accessible, online platform to host their mentoring programming.
Initially designed for use by students with disabilities at the University of California, Berkeley, the site features all the important aspects of an e-mentoring platform–private messaging, chat, community forums–with the ability to customize it and add additional features.
