COVID-19 turned our world of day programming and employment services upside down in March of 2020 with the closure of all in-center services. Our employment and support services continued at a reduced capacity but we were forced to layoff a large percentage of our team members. Those remaining jumped into action, assuming the role of production workers while the employment team made their way into the community to ensure services continued and that our participants had the supports they needed.
It was a new reality and a pathway different from how we used to do business. How we operate has changed forever and the ProAct staff understood that their roles would forever change as well, with job duties quite different from their pre-COVID roles.
In the midst of society’s reaction to the coronavirus, work on our production floors was continuing and because of a commitment from team members we have been able meet the needs of those customers. The team hasn’t missed a beat.
It’s not easy work, maybe not the most exciting and certainly not glamorous, but this a group of employees made the commitment to forgo unemployment and transition to the role of production worker. We missed our participants, but while in-center programming was shutdown, other ProAct team members were quickly developing a new service model!
Virtual enrichment programming made its debut in April of 2020 and quickly grew to include all programming sites. In May, we resumed limited in-center enrichment programming with strict safety guidelines in place.
We are now slowly making our way through this new COVID world and the ProAct team hasn’t missed a beat.
While some other providers stopped their work with participants in the community, we continued. Put simply, we honed in on what needed to be done and tackled it.
As we wrapped up our appreciation week for all of our staff, we took a few minutes to say THANK YOU and want you to know how much your work and commitment to the organization is appreciated. We could not have done it without you. It’s clear you believe in ProAct and our mission to serve participants and make their lives better.
We don’t know what tomorrow will bring but we do know we have a team in place ready to conquer whatever it may be. As one we say “bring it on.”
Kim Feller, VP of Programs and Services