Local nonprofit One Step Beyond recently received a $10,000 grant from the ON Semiconductor Foundation as a part of its Giving Now program.
The grant will be implemented to One Step Beyond’s culinary program, and will help grow the impact that the nonprofit has across the Valley.
“(We are) very excited,” said Jeff Swanson, One Step Beyond executive director of administration. “Any revenues we’re able to bring in that we can put back toward programs makes a difference in the lives of the people we serve. So, the support from Onsemi will go a long way in our culinary training operations.”
One Step Beyond is an organization that provides programming and services to adults with intellectual disabilities. Their goal is to give people with disabilities a chance to live a happy and successful life by teaching them valuable life skills such as cooking, employment skills, health and fitness, performing and fine arts, social recreation and sports.
The culinary program specializes in teaching the basics of cooking and catering. Students go through a variety of training topics, such as safety, meal planning, kitchen skills and customer service.
“The mission of the grant was STEAM focused,” Swanson said. “People with disabilities don’t always have the same ability to learn those specific ways. So, the culinary training program provides a hands-on opportunity, which are highly flexible, lifelong learning opportunities to make them independent.”
The culinary program will be seeing upgrades across the board with the added funds. In addition to receiving STEAM-focused training, they will also be expanding their facilities’ homestyle and commercial kitchens, as well as new kitchen equipment for the students to learn at the highest quality.
“The ultimate goal is connecting them with employment in the community on the culinary side,” Swanson said. “So whether it’s a catering business like the one we operate at One Step, or working at an off-site, vocational location where they can take some of those cutting skills they’ve learned through grants like this, and put them into perspective to earn a livable wage.”
Onsemi is an organization dedicated to pushing and creating innovative and intelligent power and sensing technologies. Its Giving Now program is one of the many ways in which it gives back to the community both locally and globally.
Onsemi represents social, environmental and business responsibility in an effort to “work for a better tomorrow.”
“Having partners like Onsemi give us money for the culinary program helps us take that mission further,” Swanson said. “Our long-term goal is credited as individuals with meaningful employment, life skills programs and recreational programs, those things are awesome. But at some point, they’re going to take care of themselves, and learning a livable wage is a big part of that. So, we’ve had a lot of success. We’re always growing; we’re always expanding.”
Moving forward, Swanson and One Step Beyond will use this momentum from Onsemi’s grant to keep pushing forward in getting people educated and employed for a better future.
“The goal is to keep expanding, keep growing and providing programs in the Valley,” Swanson said. “There’s around 300,000 people that have disabilities in our service area. We serve 700. You could take that two ways — we do a great job for 700, we’re missing 299,000 of them. But that has been a mission to serve and grow, and we believe that wherever there are special needs, One Step needs to be.”