Workers at the Amish Sunshine Training Center do jobs five hours per day many people would find repetitive and boring.
Workers at the Amish Sunshine Training Center do jobs five hours per day many people would find repetitive and boring.
However, this group of people happens to thrive off of familiar routines.
Sitting at tables in the bright workroom in Middlefield Township, 32 adults with special needs stuff cotton into jewelry boxes, bag up assembly kits and insert tiny screws in Vitamix blender parts most days.
But, if there is a rush order, everyone refocuses on turning out 400 to 500 of the same parts or packages in a day, said ASTC Director Mel Kurtz, who works alongside staff leaders Elmina Kurtz and Dorothy Weaver.
And, if the rush order is on time and the customer is happy, workers get a bonus in the form of donuts the next morning, he said.
“Money is not a motivator here, but food is,” Mel said.
Most of the employees graduated at age 16 from Sunny Acres or Sunny Hope schools, which the Amish run for students with special needs. Others are referred to the center by the Geauga County Board of Developmental Disabilities’ Betsy Benner Metzenbaum Center in Chester Township, Mel said.
Their productive activity is what he and the ASTC board of directors imagined when the community started planning the 6,000-square-foot building on Madison Road the summer of 2018.
Talks, however, had started way back in 1999, Mel said.
His daughter, who has Down syndrome, was one of a handful of students at Sunny Hope School who would graduate and possibly go to work at a sheltered workshop for the developmentally disabled.
Taking care of their own is part of the Amish culture and community leaders could see a day coming when they would want to protect their special members.
“The older students had to have someplace to go,” said Nevin Byler, president of the ASTC board of directors.
Since then, the Amish population has grown and a coalition of concerned community members gathered in 2016 to kick off a construction plan.
Several years of planning, fundraising and hard work hit the ground in splinters in September 2018. A tornado leveled the partly-built structure, one of few buildings damaged that day.
“It was all put up with donations. When it went down, it was disheartening,” Byler said.
But the community salvaged what they could and with the help of the GCDD, the now bright, airy rooms give Amish with special needs a purpose and a paycheck.
“(Metzenbaum) really supports this place,” Byler said. “They are great people. We couldn’t do it without them.”
Starting with 18 employees, the training center has enough work for 32 and there are 10 more individuals interested in joining the group. Ages range from 16 to 32, but most workers are in their 20s.
On a typical day, Mel mingles with the workers, teaching new skills and encouraging them.
Eighteen other Amish work alternating days to make sure everyone stays on task, that they get their daily exercise or recess and eat well at lunchtime, he said.
“The staff is what keeps us going,” Mel said, adding Weaver was a teacher before she came to Sunshine.
“This is not their first rodeo,” he said.
“It takes special girls to work with special children,” Byler added.
Bins full of materials to be processed or completed projects ready to ship out are located on pallets near each station in the large production room on the north side of the building.
Elmina said the little cardboard jewelry boxes need the right size of cotton-like filler and most of the workers can match them up, but for some, that task is not enough.
“They like the more challenging jobs,” she said.
One of those would be using a needle-like magnetic screwdriver to put a very small screw in the Vitamix blender drive, Elmina said, adding she smiles at the delicate work and wonders at the failings of modern technology.
“They can get a man on the moon, but they can’t get a screw in there,” she said.
Another project, undertaken when a need arises, is to bag shredded cardboard to be used as bedding for small caged animals, such as rabbits or guinea pigs.
Called Eco Bedding for the Best Nest, the material is stuffed into plastic bags, weighed and sealed, Byler said.
Black plastic muffler parts for trucks are clipped, separated and repackaged for Laszeray Technology LLC in North Royalton.
Kraftmaid Cabinetry in Middlefield also contracts work to ASTC.
Byler said he is searching for additional contracts because the center can accommodate about than twice the number of workers now employed.
So far, much of their work has come through Metzenbaum Sheltered Industries, but the board is able to secure contracts beyond those.
“We’re really looking for work,” Byler said.
The board of directors includes Chester L. Detweiler, Nelson Stutzman, Marty Mullett and Nelson L. Miller, he said.
A day at the training center starts when workers arrive at 9 a.m. By 10:30 a.m., they are ready for a little exercise, Elmina said. Lunch is followed by a short recess and then everyone is back at the assembly lines from 1-3 p.m.
“This is a happy place to work,” Mel said.
When the center first got up and running, the workers were happy to labor for food, Byler said. When they received their first checks, reviews were mixed.
“They didn’t know what (a paycheck) was – and they don’t care,” Mel said.
Don Rice, director for GCDD and Metzenbaum, said the arrangement is satisfying for all.
GCDD contracts with MSI to train individuals with special needs to work at various businesses.
“Community employment is the ultimate goal,” he said.
Skills a person learns at a sheltered workshop may enable him or her to work at a regular job, Rice said.
“Other groups help them find employment, but there are people who can’t transition to (regular) employment,” he said.
