Real Work Experience for Students with Disabilities

  Valuable yet Hard to Find Remember how excited you were when you got your very first job as a kid and started earning your own money? Employment opportunities for students with disabilities are not always easy to find and don’t always go smoothly because the employer may not have an understanding of how to … Read more

Social Enterprise Alliance: Twin Cities Profile

  MDI is a manufacturing organization that provides standard and custom packaging solutions, production services, and environmental services for business-to-business customers. We manufacture corrugated plastic products; a wide variety of totes, trays, boxes rolls and sheets of plastic, used by distribution and warehouse centers, retail, manufacturing and agriculture businesses all over the country. MDI provides … Read more

“Stomp on Stigma”

  4th Annual “Stomp on Stigma” 5K To Support National Mental Health Awareness Month On May 7th, a few MDI employees participated in the annual “Stomp on Stigma!” This 5K event began at 9:30 at the IRA Civic Center in Grand Rapids, with everyone being encouraged to come and have a great time. Proceeds benefited … Read more

A Harsh Economy

  People with disabilities are twice as likely to be unemployed as those without a disability. The poverty rate for working-age adults with disabilities is 3X that of individuals without disabilities. Nearly 28% of working-age adults with a disability were living below the poverty line in 2011, double the percentage for other workers. Nearly half … Read more

MDI Shout out: Thank you, Otto Bremer Foundation!

  Thanks to a $25,000 grant from the Otto Bremer Foundation, MDI was able to purchase a much-needed piece of manufacturing machinery. Here’s Beth, one of the MDI team leads, with the BEL erector and sealer. It’s super user-friendly, so several employees with and without disabilities are able to run it with tremendous efficiency, making the forming, packing … Read more

Employment Outcome Report

  Employment planning services are designed to assist a person seeking employment to learn about employment opportunities within the community and to make informed decisions. Employment planning services are individualized to assist a person to choose employment outcomes and/or career development opportunities based on his or her preferences, strengths, abilities, and needs. Services begin from … Read more

MDI Purchases Facility & Land In Cohasset, MN

Click to Request a Quote March 14, 2016 – MDI is pleased to announce today that the organization has officially purchased a 110,000 square foot facility and adjacent land in Cohasset, Minnesota. This investment is in direct support of MDI’s strategies for expanding the business and adding employment opportunities for people with and without disabilities. … Read more

Social Enterprise isn’t new. It is alive and well in Minnesota.

  A practical theory works in providing products to the business community and jobs for people with disabilities. Quietly – for over 50 years – an organization in Minnesota, initiated and developed a working theory of Social Enterprise and now continues to refine it in practice. MDI is a manufacturing organization that provides standard and … Read more

Support the Success of Employees with Disabilities with an Investment in Impact

  More capability. More business. More jobs. The timing is right for you to help purchase machinery for MDI to enter the foam packaging business. Foam is custom- designed to protect products during manufacturing, transport, storage and display and can be cut into any shape and size for electronics, medical, automotive, retail, and more. Three … Read more

PLASTICS SERVICES SOCIAL IMPACT