It’s a busy lunch hour at Something Beautiful, a restaurant and present store in Stonewall.
Gary Lawson makes a recent pot of espresso. Kyle Soroka washes dishes within the kitchen. Darrell Dempster helps set a desk put aside for a reservation.
They’re all shoppers of Neighborhood Residing Interlake (CLI), a corporation that helps adults dwelling with disabilities. They’re additionally workers at One thing Stunning, a social enterprise CLI opened in 2016.
“We’re doing all the pieces round right here,” mentioned Lawson. “Working within the kitchen half, doing meals and desserts and all that stuff.”
CLI gives day programming for adults with disabilities and operates six homes the place shoppers reside with assist.
“Neighborhood Residing helps adults dwelling with disabilities to reside regular lives in the neighborhood, lives like everybody else,” mentioned Government Director Tracy Fidler. “Coming to work, doing jobs, dwelling every day lives at house… what anyone else would do.”
The One thing Stunning present store opened in 2016, and the cafe opened in 2019. The 2 companies and the group’s places of work are in an outdated Dwelling {Hardware} constructing in downtown Stonewall, which CLI purchased and commenced renovating in 2014. Fidler says the central location permits for extra interplay with the group.
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“You see your pal that you simply went to high school with and questioned the place you had been all these years, and now they see you working in a significant job,” she mentioned.
Dempster got here up with the identify “One thing Stunning.”
“I at all times thought of folks, that’s why I known as [it], ‘One thing Stunning,’” he mentioned.
Joan Auger has been a consumer with CLI for 40 years, and takes care of laundry for the cafe.
“Washing them, drying them, folding them up after which getting them again on time,” she mentioned.
“It makes me really feel good to know that I can do it.”
“Our different purpose is for folks to realize abilities working at One thing Stunning, to have the ability to exit in the neighborhood and be capable to get a job there. So we’re a coaching incubator,” Fidler mentioned.
CLI was began in 1965 by a gaggle of fogeys of youngsters with disabilities within the space. They centered on securing an training, and afterward, housing and dwelling helps for his or her kids. Fifty years later, the group is supporting roughly 50 adults and employs about 80 workers.
In September, CLI additionally started operating the canteen at Stonewall’s Veterans Memorial Sports activities Complicated. All funds from the three social enterprises are invested again into CLI’s operations and providers. CLI can also be main a marketing campaign as they enter Stonewall within the 2025 Kraft Hockeyville contest, the place the profitable city wins $250,000 and an NHL recreation performed in the neighborhood.
“The world is an inclusion level of the group. It brings all people collectively, and in order that’s why everybody obtained collectively and put on this nomination,” Fidler mentioned.
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