Registration | Log In

Search Grants | Fulfilled Grants | More About Find It, Fund It, Florida

Share

Please share this page to help in fulfilling this grant.

Goal

The goal of this grant request is to purchase varied sizes and colors of polo style collared shirts for my Extended Transition (ET) work program for special needs (ESE) students. The program guides students through a goal to create work readiness and obtain job related skills. The shirts will help teach our students the importance of dressing appropriately for work and their business workplace setting.  

 

What will be done with my students

It can be commonly known that learning financial literacy is necessary before and after you start working. Teaching students work related experiences and behaviors can help a student learn skills needed for when they achieve a job of their own. Learning the expectations before you start working can be equally important. My students are not much different except that they have special needs which adds to their challenges. They even face limited job and career sources based on their abilities. The grant request is to fill a need that many of my students face and fulfill a concept that you need to dress appropriately for the workplace.

This grant is based around a need that I see daily with my students. Many come to their work site-based program where they learn job and work related skills, but come not prepared for the work environment based on their attire. We have a semi-formal environment where it is expected that students will wear a polo style collared shirt. We meet with other business professionals daily within the site, and other professionals from outside agencies frequently. What we need is at minimum professional looking polo collared shirts that will be printed with our class logo on them. We need to order various sizes for female and male students. We would like to have a few colors to offer the students in their sizes and hope to have up to a shirt per day per student that we can wash on site at the end of the week. This need is also based on a socioeconomic need. Not every student has the attire to dress appropriately daily meaning many only have T shirts and/or graphic shirts to wear. This attire excludes them from some opportunities at their educational work site, especially when involved with professionals from other agencies. This grant will help us purchase the shirts we need to make each student dressed for success and with goal of helping them get a paid job of their own. My students lack the shirts that will help to enforce real world scenarios for them that can become common place for in the workplace to dress appropriately for work or their job site. This also reinforces the look they need to present when applying for a job and interview.

I teach my students a lot of elements in financial literacy along with what and how to use the money they will earn. Concepts such as knowing what to wear and how to dress for work can be fleeting to my special needs (ESE) students without an enforced example. These students want to be prepared for work with their job skills, yet many can't manage the attire they need for an interview. Learning and seeing the importance of a work uniform can make them more hirable in their future. Through discussions with staff, it has been determined that the way a person dresses can affect the decision to hire them. With my students being special needs (ESE) students, the differences can also set them further apart from their peers. At a Pinellas County Schools facility where my students learn and work it has been expressed that staff and employees prefer a uniform type outfit to wear. We have a graphic shop that will provide us a fair rate to buy the polo style shirts from who is a Pinellas County schools vendor. Students will also be taught the breakdowns of costs and benefits for the items utilized with this grant. Additional goal is to get varied sizes of shirts since not all shirts fit the students the same way. With the long-range goal to have shirts to cover multiple years' worth of students to give an ongoing success to the program with the funding from this grant.  

 

Benefits to my students

With full funding of this grant, we will be able to purchase polo style semi-professional collared shirts that can be used to provide students the opportunity to learn and be available for a job in the process. Hope is that we will have a variety of shirts that we can use for years to come for male and female students. Benefits also include work and job-related skills that will come from this program through the financial literacy taught inclusion with this grant. We will look at how to purchase the shirts, the use of the student's logo, and learn about how dressing appropriately can help students in an interview and get them a paid job. The program logo as seen in the grant image will help enforce consistency and the benefits of a work type uniform and dress code. 

 

Describe the Students

I teach students with many varied special needs exceptionalities (ESE) who are learning job skills and financial literacy so they can work and live on their own.

We deeply appreciate YOU in advanced for your consideration with funding of this grant project.  

 

Budget Narrative

To purchase an assortment of polo style collared work appropriate shirts from a Pinellas County Schools vendor (Top It Off Imprints) with our class logo on them for our students' needs and a few immediate staff who work with these students for demonstration and role modeling. 

 

Items