Down Syndrome Young People Rising to Real Jobs. A Love Challenge

Bolivia needs to advance in the inclusion of DSYA (Down Syndrome Young Adullts) not only following the same patterns of other countries, but creating its own version of DSYA job creation strategy that can be replicated all over the world with the possibility of expanding job creation to other intellectual and physical dissabilities in a sustainable manner.

Lava Feliz & Down Syndrome Job Program is an alliance seeking to address job creation for DSYA as an integral proposition using technology to create a new and sustainable job for each youngster with intellectual and other dissabilities.

Young people in Bolivia do not find jobs unless they have at least one special skill and the appropriate education. Young people with dissabilities have three times less opportunity to find a job, even if they have a special skill and education. Down Syndrome Young Adults (DSYA) face the reality of not ever working just as the rest of the population with intellectual deficit. This reality is the same all over the world, but in the last 10 years we have had many advancements in the inclusion of DSYA in jobs in the Latin American region, with good examples in Chile and Argentina.

In Bolivia a total of 1,699 people with Down Syndrome are registered in the Ministry of Health. All of them have a disability card and receive health care for free at all levels of care, regardless of age. 

73% of them (1249) are located in Santa Cruz, 7,7% (131) in Tarija, 7,1% (121) in La Paz, 3,7% (63) in Chuquisaca, 3,2% (55) in Cochabamba, 2,3% (39) in Beni, 1,1% (19) in Potosí, 0,88% (15) in Oruro and 0,4% (7) in Pando. 

The total number of people with diverse intellectual disabilities including autism is 11,952, from which Down Syndrome represents 14%-

In the last decade schooling has progressively grown from a very small number of DS children going to school to 80% of attendance. There are also workshops and non formal education and training in diverse areas as sports and cooking due to the work of the Down Syndrome Foundation specially in the city of Santa Cruz.

There is no specific information about Down Syndrome Young Adults (DSYA) over 18 years of age who access work. 

In Tarija there is only one case known, and there is information about 4 DSYA working in Santa Cruz.

 “People with Down Syndrome can achieve an optimal level of life through family care and support, medical advice and comprehensive rehabilitation, from an early stage”

This initially requires specific training according to the profiles that each DS child and young adult has.

The Down Foundation Center in Tarija serves a total of 54 people of different ages. They did not serve young adults over 18 years of age until a year ago, when the alliance with Lava Feliz, a local laundromat specially tailored to fit the needs of this population started. From 20 DSYA in Tarija, 10 have attended the first stage of training to become a part of Lava Feliz program.

Lava Feliz & Down Syndrome Tarija Foundation is an alliance between a for profit (Lava Feliz) and a non profit (Down Syndrome Foundation Tarija) that was specially tailored from scratch to suit the needs of different stages of job creation for DSYA, with the possibility of inclusion of the families as well as other intellectual dissabilities.

Lava Feliz has envisioned job creation not as a one sided work, but as a task to be reached through the use of DSFT (Down Syndrome Foundation Tarija) training skills developed in the last decade and the commercial abilities developed in years of work from the owners of Lava Feliz.

DSFT offers the help of psychologyst, physical trainers and other professionals for the creation of this new job environment.

Lava Feliz offers the commercial know how, marketing skills and its headquarters to pursue the first objective of the alliance: to train DSYA in Tarija in sales, so that they can create their own set of clients to serve.

The use of technology is crucial for the achievement of this goal. DSYA like to play in their cellular phones. We are introducing a new task: not only play but begin to understand what a job is.

At the same time, DSYA families have attended workshops in Lava Feliz to understand what a sales force is, how we are going the face the change in discipline, work and learning of sales and marketing. 

DSYA are using phones to learn about the clients, about the sales and about themselves in the world of everyday work. We need to create a special platform for this stage to become productive.

The total number of school students registered in Bolivia is 2.945.996.            9.700 students have some kind of intellectual disability meaning 0,32% of the registered students have mental disabilities, but not all of the people with mental disabilities attend schools or register in the system.

Bolivia is divided into 9 geographical zones called departments. Tarija is the smallest department of all and it is the sixth in population. 

Tarija is the second department with the biggest number of people with Down Syndrome, with a total of 131 persons registered (7,7%).

There still exists a small number of parents that do not register their children with Down Syndrome until medical attention is needed and they are guided to register and send them to the Foundation for special education.

There is still a small number of Down Syndrome Young Adults in Bolivia who have not ever received any kind of education, and are hidden by their families This is changing due to the use of cellular phones by them.

From the total 131 DS people registered in Tarija, 30 are adults, and 20 attend the Foundation. From the 20 that attend the Foundation, our Alliance serves 10 DSYA and their families to make a total of 50 people.

Due to the diversity of Down Syndrome stages of our target population, it has been challenging to determine which activities of sales can be achieved by each of them.

The workshops take place once a week and sometimes they do not come, but are always in contact through technology.

Their lives will change when we inroduce a new platform that they can use to practice what they learn in the workshops, and will be able to become more disciplined an achieve the final stages of training to begin working in the real world.

Down Syndrome Tarija Foundation has the following team:

Dr. Carmiña Guzman, MD. She is the president of the Foundation and an expert in DUA (Diseño Universal de Aprendizaje-Universal Learning Design). In charge of developing the images that connect children with real world learning necessities. She will provide the images to work with in the new platform.

Psychologist Esther Blas, in charge of the psychology team (5 professionals) of the Foundation, who is in charge of building the bridge between the training in Lava Feliz and the reality of the DSYA in everyday life.

Lava Feliz has the following team:

Jacqueline Patiño, BS in Bussines Administration. Managing Director at Lava Feliz, in charge of creating the workshops that are presented to DSYA every week to make them part of the sales force of Lava Feliz, as well as building abilities to be presented to other local firms interested in hiring sales force with us.

Julio Sea: Community creation expert In charge of creating communities for every DSYA working with us. He presents a physical disabiliy himself as he lacks his left leg.

Sivia Mamani: Washing expert. In charge of teaching washing, drying, ironing and folding techniques to the DSYA working with us. She herself is the mother of an 11 year old Down Syndrome girl who is on the way of being part of our target population.

The first year of activities has shown to us that we must have a technological platform to include more people in the community. It is extremly important to reach out to them through technology and we are all eager to make it possible.

The Down Syndrome Foundation Tarija has completed the first stage of funding through the alliance with Lava Feliz, who has invested USD 10,000 to build the infrastructure of washing and drying machines to be able to present the service of laundry for the local community in Tarija. 

Lava Feliz has been in the market this first year of operations servig more than 300 customers and building the step by step business model to offer a great service at a good price that mekes it a suitable alternative for washing, drying and ironing their clothes and other items.

With the implementation of a technological platform, the service can be replicated in the rest of the country, as well as in other countries.

We decided to apply to Solve because we need the help of experts in technological platforms to help us grow in the right direction.

We have not funded the technology necessary to grow and scale in technology, therefore we think the intervention of experts in this matter will be an awesome adittion to our program and will help us reach our goals in a more concrete and sustainable way.

The job creation for DSYA (Down Syndrome Young Adults) is being addressed all over the world in differente ways. All of them are seraching for the inclusion of this target population, which is a good thing.

But we are going a lot further. We have created an alliance born to become the sustainable source of jobs for DSYA, which is a totally different approach for DSYA all over the world.

It is also different because it includes people with other disabilities, as well as people without disabilities running the business.

What we envision is to have so many branches all over the world, that anyone in need of washing their clothes can reach a DSYA near them locally through their cellular phone and get their clothes washed, dried and/or ironed. 

We need to have the experts to help us do this. 

We also envision that DSYA families will have a beautiful new way of relating with their communities, becoming experts in washing items, and owning at leat one special washing machine that helps them grow their income.

This is so different than just creating a job! Is is a new way of life, as well as a new way of offering DSYA services to local companies interested in inclusion.

We expect to build a new platform that will allow every DSYA to have access 24/7 to their learning materials, asking questios and building the necessary discipline to overcome the natural barriers they face.

We expect that this new platform will open the doors to clients that would like to have a beautiful interaction with DSYA offering their services, which is a very nice way to advance without prejudices an love, pure love for our people and our goals.

Impact goals.

1.Funding target goal: Initial USD 10,000 funding for the infrastructure and washing, drying and ironing machines.

Stage: Accomplished in April 2023.

2. Alliance Agreement Signature: Agreement developed with the intervention of legal equipments from both sides.

Stage: Accomplished in September 2023.

3. Development of educational materials by May 2024.

Stage: In progress.

4. Training workshops every month

Stage: Accomplished by April 2024.

5. Funding target goal for public relations and publicity of services in 2024.

Stage: Partiallly achieved. We need to make the alliance visible to everyone and sign up new alliances with other profit and non profit actors such as Solve.

Technology we use: Cellular phones and internet to build our community of clients.

Technology we want to use: A platform that will make it two things possible:

1. The 24/7 interaction between DSYA and instructors to build discipline in terms of producing arts, videos and making DSYA reliable workers.

2. The 24/7 interaction between Lava Feliz, potential clients, and DSYA service providers in washing, drying and ironing, aa well as contracts for DSYA individuals who pitch their services for publicity campaigns of other companies.

This advancement in technology will help have an scalable business model. 

Lava Feliz; 2 full time, 2 part time workers.

Fundación Down Tarija: 5 full time, 1 part time workers.

Business Plan stage: 3 months

Operations stage: 12 months

Our organization welcomes people with different kind of disabilities, as our program is fitted to make them important without biases or barriers.

One of the 4 workers in Lava Feliz has a physical disability, as he does not have his left leg. Another is the mother of an 11 year old Down Syndrome girl. Another is an 18 year old student who has the enthusiasm of working with different people with a big smile. 

All of the workers in Down Sydrome Foundation Tarija are in total appreciation of our target population and are very inclusive and happy to work with them.

Our business model finds revenue for Lava Feliz by reaching the local population to serve them in the washing, drying and ironing of ther clothes and other items.

Our business impacts the lives of our DSYA target population by giving them a new way of working and making money.

Our business impacts the lives of the local community clients, other companies and other institutions who want to help address the job creation issues for DSYA and other disabilities.

We provide our services to clients through the use of Facebook small business page, and the creation of arts, videos and spots to offer our services.

We provide our services to DSYA and their families by helping in the design of DUA learning pages that we need to put in our new platform to make them visible 24/7, and by having workshops once a week and seminars once a month. 

We expect to have much stronger revenues throuhg the use of the new platform.

We have been able to pay for the funding monthly payments, and are being able to pay for everyones salaries.

We expect to grow the number of clients through the use of the new platform, and through the inclusion of new actors who help us become more visible in the local, national and international levels.

This will be done with the intervention of all the actors we can reach and convince to work with us not because of charity, but because they trust that our target population can upgrade their level of achievements when we use the right tools, the tools are used by the right people, and the right people get paid for doing all this.