A conversation at the Special Olympics USA Games in Minnesota found its way to a Project SEARCH classroom in New Mexico, and the interns there are already writing the next chapter.
October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month, and this year’s theme, Celebrating Value and Talent, asks all of us to look closely at what people with disabilities bring to work every day. We went looking for someone who sees that value up close, and we found Ben.
Ben Vigil, National Board Certified Teacher, teaches the Project SEARCH program inside a hospital in New Mexico, where the program is now in its 11th year. Every intern in Ben’s 2025 class found a job, and one of them now earns $22 an hour.
Ben’s classroom started using Unified Work this fall, thanks to a connection that began more than a thousand miles away at a booth in Minnesota.
A year inside a working hospital
Project SEARCH is a transition-to-work program for young adults with disabilities, ages 18 to 22, who have finished high school and are ready to take the next step toward a job.
“Project SEARCH is a program for students who graduated from high school,” Ben said. “They have disabilities, a wide range of disabilities, but they just need a little extra support finding work.”
The program works because so many people show up for it. A host business opens its doors, the school district provides a teacher, and partners from vocational rehabilitation, community support providers, the Department of Health, and transportation each fill in a piece of what an intern needs to succeed.
“We have a large partnership that we just kind of work together to help these students find jobs,” Ben said.
Ben’s classroom sits right inside the hospital, in a room that doubles as a break room. “My classroom, it’s kind of a break room classroom,” Ben said. Interns start each morning there before heading out to work alongside hospital staff in departments across the building.
Each intern completes three 10-week internships over the year, rotating through food service, patient transport, central supply, inventory, security, radiology, and environmental services, with physical therapy and rehab tech roles on the horizon. The soft skills come first, including showing up on time, managing breaks, getting along with coworkers, and following directions. The hard skills follow close behind, from food prep to data entry to clerical work, and class time goes to building resumes and practicing interviews.
“Anything that they’re going to need to learn about finding a job and getting a job and keeping that job, we’re doing that here at Project SEARCH,” Ben said.
Earning a spot takes real commitment. Recruiting starts with high school juniors and seniors and stretches across nearly a full year, with an application, an interview, and an assessment day before anyone sets foot in a department.
“We try to recruit interns who are ready to work, but they still need a lot of support, and we can get them ready,” Ben said.
From a booth in Minnesota to a classroom in New Mexico
The Special Olympics USA Games came to Minnesota in June, bringing athletes, coaches, and families from every state together for a week that people are still talking about. MDI and Unified Work were there as sponsors, with a booth and hands-on VR career exploration open to anyone who wanted to try it.
Ben was there too, wearing a different hat. Ben also works part time as health program manager for Special Olympics New Mexico and traveled to the Games as a chaperone with the New Mexico team. Ben was walking the venue with the bocce team when the Unified Work booth came into view, and a stop at the VR booth sealed it.
“I just loved it,” Ben said. “I was like, well, how can I get this to my classroom?”
Ben met Dan Struck from Unified Work that day and carried the idea home to the Project SEARCH director for New Mexico, who did not need much convincing.
“She’s like, let’s do it. Let’s run with it,” Ben said. “And it worked out great.”
The whole thing moved fast. The first conversation happened in June, and interns were sitting in Unified Work courses by fall.
The story kept growing from there. Ben presented the work at New Mexico’s statewide Project SEARCH meeting, in front of representatives from about nine sites across the state and the national director of Project SEARCH.
“She loved the idea of what we were doing,” Ben said. “So it really does make an impact.”
This is exactly why showing up at a national event matters. Unified Work’s training runs online, which means one conversation in Minnesota can reach a classroom in any state. That single conversation reached 10 interns in New Mexico, a statewide network of Project SEARCH sites, and the program’s national leadership in one season.
What Unified Work added
Unified Work joined Ben’s orientation period with eight two-hour online courses covering career prep, soft skills, and workplace readiness. Interns also explored careers in virtual reality and watched HIRED, Unified Work’s video series that follows people through the real ups and downs of starting a new job.
“Our curriculum really matched up with Unified Work’s curriculum,” Ben said.
The fit mattered, and so did the change of pace.
“The Project SEARCH curriculum, it’s pretty basic,” Ben said. “We do the same thing every year. But with Unified Work, it really was able to put our same lesson plans in a different format.”
Ben also saw how much a new voice could do for a group of young adults who spend their whole day together.
“Sometimes I think my interns get tired of hearing me for six hours,” Ben said. “Bringing in somebody new or guest speakers is always just more engaging. They hear it from somebody else.”
The staff felt the difference as well.
“It broke up the monotony for the staff,” Ben said. “Bringing in somebody new really helps me out as well.”
Trying a job before choosing one
The VR headset gave interns a chance to step inside jobs they had never pictured for themselves, and one scenario struck a chord with the whole class: a vet tech.
“We have four of our 10 interns want to go into working with animals,” Ben said. “So they got to do that on the VR and they just loved it.”
“It just really provided an extra opportunity for them to learn about something they may not have wanted to do.”
The intern who set up the headset
One intern almost did not join the program at all. Their twin had gone through Project SEARCH the year before, and even with that example at home, this intern agreed to try it only for the first part of the year, with one foot already out the door.
Everything changed the day the VR headset arrived.
“They’re pretty tech savvy,” Ben said. “They just kind of came out of their shell and were helping me set it up. I was like, I don’t know what to do. So they set it up for me. They did all the boundaries for me.”
The intern who had barely spoken was soon teaching every classmate how to use it.
“All of a sudden, their whole demeanor just changed,” Ben said. “Now [they’re] really talkative and just helping out. We even gave them intern of the month because they were doing so well.”
That confidence carried into the online courses, and Ben watched the whole room shift with it.
“It really kind of just changed the dynamic of the orientation part of our program.”
From elevator pitch to reverse job fair
The program hosts a reverse job fair every year, and it flips the usual script. Local businesses come to the interns, meet each one, and sit down for real interviews.
Unified Work’s final lesson happened to be an elevator pitch, and the timing could not have been better.
“Pretty much the end lesson was doing an elevator pitch on what makes you a good employee, what makes you who you are,” Ben said. “And that’s what we teach our interns for their reverse job fair. So it worked out perfect.”
“We got it done during our orientation, so we can revisit that and then really refine that,” Ben added.
The next Unified Work session is already on the calendar for November, during the transition week between internships, giving this class one more round of learning before their next rotation.
The numbers speak for themselves
Ben’s class earned a national award last year for employment outcomes, and the story behind that award is worth telling. Project SEARCH measures results from graduation in May through the following February, and nine of Ben’s 10 interns had jobs by that deadline.
“It doesn’t end in February,” Ben said. “That’s just when the data collection stops for the year.”
The story did not stop at nine out of 10. The tenth intern landed a job last month paying $22 an hour.
“So now we’ve got 100% of our previous cohort employed.”
The site has held at about 70% employment over the past decade, right at the benchmark Project SEARCH sets for its programs, while the national figure came in at 58% this year.
“Obviously, 100% is the goal, but 70% is our cutoff,” Ben said. “It’s such a great program because it does provide so many resources, and there’s so many partners involved in making sure that each one of those interns succeeds.”
Full circle
Seven Project SEARCH graduates now work at the hospital, in patient transport, food service, central supply, pulmonary inventory, and environmental services. All seven now mentor the interns who come after them.
“They’re teaching the interns the job that they learned how to do,” Ben said.
One of those graduates came through the program’s second class, got hired in environmental services, and has now been there for eight years.
“The hospital here, they’re very caring,” Ben said. “They’re very open to having the program here. It’s just been a really great partnership.”
What employers underestimate
We asked Ben what interns bring to a workplace that employers tend to overlook, and the answer came quickly.
“Definitely loyalty,” Ben said. “Hard work ethic. We really teach them just how to be a good employee, how to get along with others.”
The enthusiasm is impossible to miss. Internships had only just started the week we spoke, and the excitement was already spilling over.
“One intern was thrilled by the opportunity, ‘I just love work. It’s so cool. I wish I could do this every day,'” Ben said.
Another intern started in the hospital kitchen, where the team showed them how to make a sandwich on day one. That intern went on to fill three huge trays of sandwiches for patients, and the kitchen staff noticed.
“They were like, ‘Okay, we want them to work here,'” Ben said.
Ben has seen that kind of energy lift an entire department.
“When other employees see that, it really just energizes, and it changes the work dynamic there. So it just improves morale overall.”
The mentors grow right along with the interns.
“When other mentors can show somebody else how to do it, it improves their ability to do their own job,” Ben said.
A word to employers on the fence
We asked Ben what to tell a business owner who is unsure about interviewing a Project SEARCH graduate.
“We do emphasize being a good employee, all the soft skills that you’re going to need, and then just paying attention to detail,” Ben said. “They learn very quickly if you give them the time and you have the patience to do it.”
“The energy and the loyalty they bring to your business or your organization, it spreads, and it spreads smiles. And that’s the biggest thing. You just make people smile.”
“They’re surprising everybody with what they’re doing, because they just want to be there,” Ben said. “They want to help out people. And I think when other people see other people wanting to help out, it just makes other people want to be good people.”
“I think every business should have that, or should want that,” Ben said.
Why it matters
Ben summed it up in a way that stayed with us long after the call ended.
“This is why I love my job. It’s very rewarding. I see immediate outcomes.”
Ben’s classroom shows what can happen when good programs find each other. A booth in Minnesota led to a teacher from New Mexico, and that teacher gave 10 interns a head start on their reverse job fair and a clearer picture of the careers waiting for them.
We are asking employers to do one thing this October: interview one candidate with a disability. Programs like Project SEARCH are already doing the preparation, and the talent is ready.
Learn more about Project SEARCH at projectsearch.us. See the training that helped this class get started at unifiedwork.com.
