Black Hills Works is changing lives for those with disabilities and their families

Photo courtesy of Black Hills website

Black Hills Works is making a difference in the Black Hills. Their mission is to create “a community where everyone participates to achieve a life of full potential.” One part of Black Hills Works is Black Hills Foundation. The Foundation provides all of the outward communication for Black Hills Works.

Carrie Moser explains, “We do all of the marketing, all the social media, all the community education and awareness, because there’s such an array of services that we provide at Black Hills Works that it’s a lot to comprehend. And we want to make sure that the community knows the quality of life that we’re providing to the people that we support.”

Black Hills Works is a non-profit organization and relies heavily on their sponsors. Moser says, “We have amazing sponsoring organizations and businesses that partner with this, whether it be hiring people that we support or giving us in-kind contributions or financial contributions. And as well, as a multitude of individual donors that help ensure that the mission is able to be achieved.”

Prior to the 1950’s and the beginning of Black Hills Works, families with a child with a disability, could choose to either raise the child on their own with little to no resources or they could place the child in an institution. Black Hills Works was started by a family that realized that those were really the only two options.

Moser elaborates, “That’s how Black Hills work started. [It] was a couple of families coming together, because they didn’t want their children in an institution and they wanted their children to have an education, and a quality of life that was not able to be provided at the institutions at that time. So it started in their basement.”

Compared to similar agencies across the country, Black Hills Works is unique in the fact that they provide all their different services in-house.

“We provide employment support. We provide residential. We provide arts expression. We provide community life. We provide all of those resources in-house so that we’re able to really provide the opportunity for the people that we support to have as meaningful life as they want and the people that you support.”

Black Hills Works provides an array of different services.

“We offer residential support, so we have over 30 residential options for people. We provide employment supports where we have over 200 people that are employed in our community. We provide transportation to help get people back and forth where they need to go. We provide opportunities for people to get connected in their community, whether it be through volunteering or Special Olympics, through our Rapid City Storm team delegation. It could also be getting involved in advocating for themselves and their needs.”

The benefits to the over 600 residents of Black Hills Works is invaluable.

“They get to live a life In a community that they are a part of. They get to have a job that they are proud of. They get to go to Rush games and Post 22 and Summer Nights and be involved in the community. They get to volunteer at Fork Real and Feeding South Dakota. They get to share their gifts and their values with us every single day.”

However, the residents are not the only ones who benefit.

Moser explains, “The gifts that we get to share with the people that we support is just amazing. I mean, even just giving a tour and I got three hugs and four hellos in a half hour, I can go an entire day and not get the amount of love and gratitude and support that you get with five minutes. And our goal is to as we continue to increase our residential options to get more people out of the institution and into a community where they can share their skills and their talents and their values with the rest of us. “

For more information about Black Hills Works, visit their website here.