Ability Central Supports Kidpower’s Workplace Communication Programs

At Ability Central, we understand the complex challenges of seeking and maintaining employment when you live with a disability. Providing both potential employees and employers with resources regarding workplace communication and safety skills promotes inclusion, prevents problems, and increases success.

That’s where the services of the global nonprofit Kidpower International, come in.

Ability Central funds Kidpower’s Safetypowers, Workpower, and Workpower Leadership and Communication Strategies for Employers. These self-paced courses teach positive communication and psychological and personal safety skills with and for people with disabilities, as well as for employers managing workers of all abilities.

Kidpower International

Kidpower, Teenpower, Fullpower International (Kidpower for short) has been around since 1989. The global nonprofit provides information, resources and training for clients of all ages, seeking to provide a skillset enabling individuals with tools to keep themselves safe in an unpredictable society. Today they have served over 10 million clients worldwide.

Erika Leonard, Kidpower California Program Director and Workpower Project Co-Leader, explains their general approach with an analogy about swimming lessons. Like swimming lessons for drowning prevention, Kidpower focuses on practicing safety skills in ways that are enjoyable and effective.

Instead of talking about the problem, we practice the skills, because people learn better when they're enjoying themselves. That is not gimmicky. It's just effective.

Resources for Learning Communication Skills for Safety

The Kidpower.org website provides resources and training for people to come as parents or educators seeking skills for their children, as teens, as adults seeking help for themselves, or for their workplaces, clubs or communities. Kidpower offers opportunities to attend or even organize live online workshops around personal safety, advocacy, relationship-building, positive communication, and self-defense skills.

Kidpower Executive Director and Founder Irene van der Zande recognized the need for teaching safety communication skills when she found herself in a position to protect a group of children from an attacker who was threatening them. Irene, a passionate community organizer with a degree in psychology and author of a child psychology book used in early childhood education programs across the US, started thinking about how she could help educate others on effective communication and practical skills for staying safe in different situations. That’s when Kidpower was born.

The Kidpower Journey

Between collaborating with experts in the fields of public health, violence prevention, mental health, law enforcement, child safety, education, and even the martial arts, developing the curriculum, establishing centers, and training instructors, Irene and the Kidpower team have spent over three and a half decades helping Kidpower to grow and evolve. The organization has even expanded into specialized programs such as Pridepower.

When the pandemic sent the world online in 2020, Kidpower established the Kidpower Online Learning Center, a one-stop-shop for self-paced access to courses.

Ability Central is proud to fund three of these courses, making them available FREE - and to fund training using these tools that have helped over eight thousand Californians with disabilities learn how to take charge of their safety and wellbeing since our collaboration began in 2020.

Safetypowers

Kidpower’s free Safetypowers course seeks to prepare people with disabilities and their supporters to take charge of their emotional and personal safety.

“The footprint of what Ability Central has done is massive because this Safetypowers resource is available to anybody globally who wants to use it,” Erika says.

Safetypowers is where the Kidpower Online Learning Center got started. Through their Ambassadors program anyone in the world identifying as disabled can connect with the Safetypowers team to create and contribute content.

Ambassadors get informal training through Safetypowers Roundtables which can be joined anytime to learn communication skills and how to teach them. Everyone is a teacher, not just a learner, and Safetypowers centers people with disabilities as the teachers.

In Safetypowers, a resource for people with disabilities that provides these valuable communication skills will still be accessible 20 years from now. Thanks to Ability Central and the Kidpower Espanol team, the Safetypowers lessons are also available in Spanish as Poderes de Seguridad.

Workpower

In 2024, Kidpower developed Workpower. Workpower features more roleplaying videos, this time centered around communication in the workplace, and made for and by people with disabilities. Workpower’s videos provide skills for getting and keeping jobs.

Workpower videos demonstrate problematic communication, followed by worker-led communication and successful communication from both ends.

The skits align with the Kidpower analogy of swimming lessons. Focus isn’t placed on what can go wrong, but rather, how to make things go right.

One of the presenters in some role-plays I watch is Brandi, who joined the Kidpower team as a volunteer soon after Safetypowers’ inception. This year, Ability Central's grant has afforded Kidpower the capacity to pay Brandi and others on the Workpower Advisory Council – all of whom live with disabilities– for their time.

“That is a really meaningful part of Ability Central's support,” Erika notes.

Workpower Leadership and Communication Strategies for Employers (Coming Soon!)

If the supervisors and the people in positions of leadership aren't communicating effectively, communication strategies taught to individuals with disabilities in Safetypowers and Workpower won’t prevent as many breakdowns in communication.

That’s why Kidpower’s latest Ability Central funded course seeks to inform and equip employers with skills to create an inclusive work environment with open communication.

Erika says employers don’t often have lived experience with disability. Employers don’t typically intend to demonstrate bias, and the term alone can be off-putting , she explains. This is why the program doesn’t use the word “biases” to describe the negative beliefs employers might hold about people with disabilities, and the roleplaying scenarios don’t call them out by name either. People are less likely to explore new skills if they feel they are being judged and they may decide to shut down or turn away.

Workpower Leadership and Communication Strategies for Employers frames the discussion with this understanding in mind, marketing the skills taught in the course as a reflection of consistency with existing employer goals. The course is a tool to supplement employer training, or to provide training that individual team members can self-access, which employers like.

How Kidpower Courses are Effective

In using the voices of real individuals living with disability, visibility is brought to the community. Kidpower works with anyone who wants to present, even if audio quality might not be great, or a presenter may not be able to show up visually.

Kidpower’s courses aren’t about achieving perfection but about being effective. Erika says one of the goals in both Workpower resources is greater connection

We want [inclusive workplaces with good communication] to be achievable so that somebody can look at it and go, I could develop that skill and I could still be me and I could still mess up and I could still fix it.

The videos in these courses are co-created for emotional safety. That means both the individuals with disability and the supervisors roleplaying these workplace conversations decide together- along with Erika and other trainers - how they will approach the conversation.

Improving communication for individuals with disability is what we do at Ability Central. In investing in Kidpower’s educational programs, we’re helping to open the lines of communication between people with disabilities and employers.

Facing Communication Challenges in the Workplace

A commonplace hesitancy to discuss disability exists in the workplace. Employees may be unsure what to disclose, while employers often lack guidance on offering accommodations. This lack of communication and understanding can create an environment where accommodations are unmet and poor performance reviews paint an inaccurate picture of the tremendous value that employees with disabilities can bring to the table.

Workpower Leadership and Communication Strategies for Employers creates these workplace scenarios that contrast common employer pitfalls, like holding assumptions about employee capabilities or motivations, with skills like asking clarifying questions and showing curiosity about employee needs.

Erika points out that individuals with disabilities shouldn’t have to decide if their truth is unreasonable before speaking up. By stating their truth, they can help employers understand their situation so everyone can work together to find solutions.

Accommodations are essential for equity at work, and when employers and workers can communicate more effectively to identify problems, barriers, and solutions, they are more prepared to support success for everyone and for the business.

Ability Central is proud to fund these programs and excited to see how Workpower for Employers will help shape more inclusive workplaces.

“Our work is never done,” Erika declares passionately. She’s been with Kidpower since 1995.

Irene emphasizes the importance of Ability Central's support, noting the level of commitment has afforded Kidpowers the opportunity to create unique services and support, including these online courses for people with disabilities and their employers.

“Lives are changing,” Irene declares.

Lives do change when people learn how to practice awareness, communicate effectively, and set boundaries. The skills demonstrated in the Kidpower courses are simple to practice, and a valuable tool-set for a community vulnerable to communication failures typical in the workplace.

To learn more, contact safety@kidpower.org or visit these online self-paced courses:

At Ability Central, we’re proud to partner with organizations like Kidpower that empower people with disabilities through communication and safety education. Learn more about our mission at Ability Central.

Your donation directly supports these partnerships, helping us expand free training and resources to communities in need.

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