Bardell recognized for achievements in Supported Employment Services program
Aaron Bardell, the 2022 Biggs Award winner, packages Drunken Sailor Hand Crafted Spices brand seafood spice in the What’s Cooking? Commercial Kitchen. KIRK STARRATTNEW MINAS, N.S. — A New Minas resident working in The Flower Cart Group’s Supported Employment Services program has proven himself a model, award-winning employee.
Based in New Minas, The Flower Cart Group promotes community participation for adults with barriers through supported training and employment.The Biggs Award is bestowed annually, recognizing a person who exemplifies the work skills taught and supported by Supported Employment Services. It highlights a worker who has a cognitive disability and who has become an excellent role model for others.
What’s Cooking? Commercial Kitchen department head and Supported Employment Services co-ordinator Shelley Hopkins presents Aaron Bardell with The Flower Cart Group’s 2022 Biggs Award. CONTRIBUTEDBardell said he finds the commercial kitchen to be a relaxing work environment, and he likes that he can go at his own pace. He started out working two mornings a week but now works four or five and will stay to work afternoons if he’s needed.
He also enjoys playing videogames and he recently took up CrossFit. Bardell said CrossFit takes several fitness disciplines and combines them into one. He said with a laugh that “it definitely hurts a lot” but “it definitely helps” get him into better physical shape. “Aaron will move on to learn some more of those skills with the focus on getting him out into another community-based job,” Hopkins said.
Aaron Bardell, The Flower Cart Group’s 2022 Biggs Award winner, says he has learned valuable skills and developed self-confidence working in the Supported Employment Services program. KIRK STARRATTThe Flower Cart Group executive director Jeff Kelly said he is “so happy” for Bardell. He said he couldn’t think of a more worthy candidate, considering everything that the Biggs Award encompasses.
Kelly said that’s what the support of supportive employment can provide: “the opportunity to excel and grow and shine at their own pace.”The Flower Cart Group could soon be breaking ground on a new social enterprise and vocational training centre.
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