Dear Members:

On Thursday, Oct. 11 the Chamber is hosting its first ever Job and Resource Fair for People with Disabilities. We are very excited to provide this resource to our Members and the community at large. As with any new initiative, it is because of the volunteer leadership we receive from our Members that we are able to create new events that help us further our mission to better the entire business community.

Thank you to the dozens of businesses and organizations that have stepped up to support this event by exhibiting at the fair. The Chamber is in ongoing conversations about the job environment and we are shocked that too often companies are reporting that they cannot reach qualified applicants to fill the open positions they have.

With your support and involvement, we’ve decided to take action and have had positive results for our actions thus far. Thursday’s disability job fair and our previous veteran’s hiring events allows the business community to reach out and match willing employers with job seekers.

You may be wondering, why is the Chamber hosting a disability job and resource fair? Given the uncertainty of the overall job market, the Chamber felt it was important to bring together the membership to demonstrate our unwavering commitment to providing jobs and economic opportunity to the disability community. Action and positive results are how we will measure our impact.

Secondly we are hosting this fair because as every business struggles to find new market share, too often the disability community an untapped resource. As our planning committee’s research made clear, there are demonstrable economic benefits to hiring and involving the disability community in our workplace.

While we have hosted job fairs before, the Job and Resource Fair for People with Disabilities will be a learning experience for the Chamber. Given the great interest we’ve had thus far, we know it will be a success in one of our objectives; highlighting the positive impact the disability community can play in our organizations.

We are looking forward to a fantastic event and hope it provides many job leads and positions to both individuals with disabilities, their families and friends who understand how valuable it is to support organizations that open their doors to all business professionals.

There is still time to sign up if your business is interested in exhibiting. Thanks again for all of your support and to all those who will be in attendance.

You can find the registration information here or call the Chamber at 630-355-4141 for more information.