It’s almost coffee time at a new Queens cafe run by young adults with disabilities.
A spotlight disability employment report by City Comptroller Mark Levine released during Disability Pride Month, highlighted data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) showing that 70% of the working-age population with cognitive difficulties are out of the labor force.
Young Seh Bae, a mother of an autistic child, had a mission to change that when she founded Queens-based nonprofit Community Inclusion & Development Alliance (CIDA) in 2016 to plan a future life for kids like her son after school.
“Families spend years advocating for education and services, but when our children become adults, opportunities for meaningful employment and community participation become much more limited,” said Young Seh Bae, Ph.D., Founder and Executive Director of CIDA, in a press release shared with Able News.
This October, kids on the spectrum will welcome customers to CoSpire Café in Bayside, for the second time this year as part of the internship phase of CIDA’s job readiness program for individuals with cognitive disabilities.
“We created CoSpire because young adults with disabilities need more than classroom instruction. They need opportunities to learn, practice, work, and show the community what they can do,” Dr. Bae said in the release.
After rigorous classroom-based instruction and acquiring food service, career and personal goal-setting skills at CIDA’s headquarters, the young disabled adults move a mile and a half north to the café to learn how to make coffee, serve customers, use the cash register and make a transaction. While the servers work, CIDA hosts family support groups to assist parents through mental and physical health as well as other issues related to disability services.
Since incorporating as a nonprofit in 2016, CIDA has grown to serve approximately 2,000 families across New York and employ 30 individuals with developmental disabilities since the opening of the café in June, selling breakfast sweets, coffee and smoothies in a tiny, luminous gallery space that’s decorated with inclusive inspired paintings made by the kids. The cafe internship is split into two-month cohorts a year, one in August and the other in October, with a strong focus on culturally and linguistically diverse communities.
In recognition of National Disability Employment Awareness Month, CoSpire will celebrate four years since the start of the job readiness program and four months since the opening of the neighborhood café that builds an inclusive workforce. CIDA will also celebrate its tenth anniversary as a nonprofit supporting individuals with disabilities and their families through education, family support, life-skills development, employment preparation, community participation, and advocacy, in December.
Although New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has rolled out a series of initiatives in favor of marketing improvement strategies for small businesses and nonprofit organizations, Dr. Bae says the administration should do more for those dedicated to improving the lives of people with disabilities.
CIDA has an annual budget of just $150,000 and all café revenue is reinvested into CIDA’s Job Readiness Program for young adults with disabilities.
Even though they use the coffee shop to seek partnerships with local employers who can provide internships, employment opportunities, workplace exposure, and other pathways into the workforce, efforts still fall short, Dr. Bae said.
“There’s a lot of big companies offering big stuff but I think opportunities is in the local small companies or small stores, and if they can create a job opportunity for young people, I think job opportunities could maybe [be] much more expanded than just focusing on Amazon or those mega stores,” she told Able News at CIDA’s headquarters in Queens.
Dr. Bae openly invites their CIDA’s Queens neighbors and local businesses to visit CoSpire, meet the young adults at work and partner with them at 1:00 pm on October 13th, when the nonprofit will serve and try to brew additional funding in their meeting with NYC Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities Commissioner Nisha Agarwal, who is scheduled to visit.
A recent bipartisan statewide voter survey conducted by Global Strategy Group found that nearly three-quarters of New York State voters support policies that incentivize businesses to hire more people with disabilities.
Inclusion becomes meaningful when people with disabilities have genuine opportunities to learn, work, contribute, and belong alongside everyone else and that is true for Dr. Bae.
“An inclusive workforce cannot be built by disability organizations alone—it takes an entire community willing to recognize ability and create opportunity,” Dr. Bae said in the release.
CoSpire Café is located at 36-28 Bell Blvd., Bayside, NY 11361.