Rising to the Occasion

- Rise & Nye's, inclusion jobs and dignity, giving a population that has been discarded, forgotten, marginalized forever.

Rise & Nye's is here to give them an opportunity to shine, an opportunity to show their abilities, to be included just like everybody should be included.

(bright inspiring music) - Hello, welcome, welcome, welcome.

- Rise & Nye's is a coffee and ice cream shop in downtown Sarasota, but it's one with a mission.

Most of our staff has intellectual or developmental disabilities.

Most of these guys never get a job, 80% never get a job, and it's important to have a space for them to show their abilities so that people can meet them, realize that they can run a whole coffee and ice cream shop on their own, and maybe they'll hire them in their businesses.

You and I can take our resume and go apply for the job that's posted across the street.

These guys are not able to do that.

They don't get the chance.

Whether it's the fear of difference from these other employers, or they thank, gosh, if I've got Dylan working here, I need to have three people to help 'em, which isn't the case.

- Single mint chip.

- Thank you, Dylan.

- No problem.

I actually just started here when they first opened.

I was actually the first new employee that started here, and I had no idea what the heck I was doing, but I had some extra help from people who were experienced working here before.

I was a nervous type of guy, but I'm very friendly and I have amazing customer services.

Beaver gave me the name The Mayor because I like to attract the people who come in into the shop.

They get ice cream and coffee.

All of us here work here with a unique disability, and for me, I can name you three.

I have ADHD.

That means I have a hard time concentrating in one spot.

I have a chromosome disorder.

That means one of my chromosomes broke off somewhere and went somewhere else in my body.

And I used to have epilepsy, but not anymore.

I do enjoy working here with my coworkers.

They also have unique disabilities like me.

They really understand like what my challenges are and what my understanding is.

- Three, maybe four years ago now I met a couple of guys at an event at Ringling College, and they were filmmakers, and they were starting to do virtual reality work.

So I thought, gosh, if we could build a virtual coffee shop and give these guys an opportunity to train, to practice in that environment, maybe it'll help to lessen things once they get into the shop.

Many people with autism and other issues have sensory problems.

The humming that you can hear in the shop, the fridge, the grinder in the shop, the espresso machine when that steam wand goes off.

Those things can drive somebody out the door who have sensory issues.

So I met with these guys and said can you build me a Rise & Nye's?

Can you build me a coffee and ice cream shop with all the noise, with all the chaos?

So I met with the gang from Easter Seals.

We put a bunch of grant money together to be able to build these things.

- And we discussed it.

Instead of just building some coffee shop that's some random coffee shop, let's model your real coffee shop.

And we figured that that would work really well for these individuals with disabilities.

So that's what we got started with, and we made the full coffee shop with these three different modules in it, and we started putting our clients, the Easter Seals clients in it before the coffee shop even existed and getting them used to the idea.

So when they got there for their first day, they didn't have that deer in the headlights situation.

They weren't scared.

At least less, right?

We basically cast what they're seeing onto a screen in the room through Chromecast, and then the teacher's able to to go, "Oh, no, no, push that button or pick that cup up."

You know, and guide them, give them that.

Sometimes it's even hand over hand, you know, depending on how that client is.

- So you can do like working with the grinder, working with the espresso machine, or they're scooping with ice cream, making ice cream sandwiches.

It feels weird once you have the headset on, but you have to get used to it.

You have to get used to the background environment.

You have to get used to the noise in the background, and it sometimes gets so distracting.

Yeah, it's a lot of commotion.

It's not easy for us employees who are very sensitive to some things.

- So now we have this amazing virtual reality program with three key modules for Rise & Nye's.

We started adding in almost like life skills a little bit in these things.

So it's not just like, hey, grind a bag of coffee for this customer.

It's like, here's your order.

The customer wants a quarter pound of coarsely ground coffee in a bag, right?

Our client gets the order and we do something.

We tell 'em to follow the green.

So on the beginner level, when the first step is lit up green, and you go and you pick that up.

And in this particular situation, it's take the lid off the coffee beans first.

And then it shows you on the counter where to put the lid, and then it shows you to get the scoop and how many beans to scoop to fill that order.

We're now in a second phase of the coffee shop that we're building and we've added in an avatar.

When you're delivering the bag to the customer or the coffee, we encourage them to make some eye contact, you know, and it registers a little bit of time each time and we can see, we can start to gauge, you know?

After we look at it, I'm like, oh, you should a little longer, or maybe it's too long.

Those kind of things are more therapy than just, than the training.

- To me it just shows the amazing power of virtual reality and and how it's helped spaces like this, and I can see so many other applications forward, as well.

- This idea, this tool is here to potentially not just entertain people, but to help people, using tech for good.

To bring digital therapeutics effectively to people, not just neurodiverse.

We can help anybody in the future with this sort of technology.

Good job, man.

You did good today.

- Got a lot better.

- Thank you.

- No problem.

- Pleasure, sir.

- So 35 people work through this place.

We've got 300 on the wait list, so we need to do something to help give more opportunities to these people with disabilities.

How do you hire people with Down syndrome?

How do you hire somebody with autism?

You just hire them.

(chuckles) Just hire them and give them a shot.

They're gonna show up early.

They're gonna be dedicated employees.

They're gonna do everything they can to succeed.

They wanna succeed.

They will probably surprise you, and they're just so proud to have a space to do that.

- Never judge a person by their looks.

It doesn't matter what color your skin is and what your gender is and what your ability is.

It's all about enjoying who you are and the world that we live in to this day.

- Lifting others lifts us all.

(bright inspiring music)