Sackville's Open Sky Co-operative offering training to start businesses

Open Sky Co-operative in Sackville is looking for people with learning disabilities or mental health issues who are struggling to find work.

The co-op, with its vegetable gardens, goats, donkeys, chickens and pigs, offers residencies, vocational training and support to adults living with these challenges.

Starting in June, it is offering business training to up to 16 participants in the area, with the hope they will get together to form their own businesses.

Margaret Tusz-King, the co-operative's executive director, will be delivering the training.

It gives me a sense of accomplishment.- Christian Watts

"For people who have those kinds of challenges it's really hard [to find] employment, especially hard in a rural area like Sackville where jobs are hard to come by for practically anybody."

During her time at Open Sky she's seen that not everyone can be molded to fit conventional jobs.

"So rather than try to change all the workplaces in the world we've decided why don't we create new work places?" she said.

Tusz-King will give three weeks of business training modified to meet the needs of participants, and then she hopes they find similar interests and skills and start small businesses of their own, filling gaps in the community.

Easy to find, Hard to Keep

Christian Watts, 25, is a board member at Open Sky, and volunteers his time tending gardens and livestock.

Watts also has a learning disability and plans to take the training.

He has worked as a janitor at two different locations, but neither job worked out.

Most recently he was a dishwasher at a bakery in Aulac, but after the building burned down and was later rebuilt, he wasn't offered his job back.

"I was kind of in limbo," said Watts. 

"You kind of start losing yourself almost."

He said working offered him much more than a paycheck.

"It gives me a sense of accomplishment, it gives me a sense of belonging more or less, the money is just the thing that comes with it," Watts said.

"It's being able to be around other people, to work in a group, to have a good environment."

Watts feels the only good thing about losing his job is that he's had more time to volunteer at Open Sky.

He said he's looking forward to the business training, and meeting people, and can't wait to start his own business and get back to work.