This Amish Training Center Helps Open Doors For Community Members With Special Needs
Special Creations, an Amish-run center in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania, plays a special role in the community – providing work opportunities for community members with physical and mental disabilities. Gwen Albers of New Castle News shares more on what they do:
At Special Creations at 819 state Route 18 in Wilmington Township, south of the Dairy Farmers of America cheese plant, the 15 Amish clients do piecemeal work like assembling drip lines for greenhouses, organizing hardware for roofing companies, assembling plastic clothespins for a Lancaster company, and installing hardware for local Amish cabinet makers.
More projects are needed.
“We appreciate everyone (who has helped),” said Neal Miller, board chairman for Special Creations and owner of the neighboring Neal’s Harness Shop. “It’s a great thing, but we could use help finding more projects.”
Everything they do has to be assembled while sitting at a table.
Clients also make fire starters from toilet paper and paper towel rolls stuffed with shredded newspaper and dipped in wax. An electric paper shredder was converted to a hand crank since the Amish do not use electricity.
It seems to me this center is doing great work, helping find opportunities for those with disabilities to contribute.
The Amish know the importance of work for all the benefits it brings – mental health, a sense of achievement, being able to contribute in a productive way.
But if someone has mental or physical challenges, the standard venues for work – on the farm or in a traditional manufacturing shop – just might not be a good fit.
They share the example of 26-year-old Lydia Byler, who has undergone dozens of surgeries to address spina bifida. Lydia’s father Gideon says that “She loves it and is always looking forward to going.”
Other products they make include bag clips, and air fresheners. Here’s the Mission Statement, which is included on their products’ packaging, as you can see in the above photo of clothes pins:
Special Creations Training Center is a 501(c)(3) non-profit established by the Amish community of New Wilmington, Pennsylvania. The purpose of the organization is to provide a safe and comfortable environment for individuals who suffer from mental & physical disabilities and limitations.
Our goal is to equip these individuals with meaningful education and life skills. The activities of the organization include teaching individuals to perform various jobs and offering them opportunities to practice those skills in real-world settings.
Additionally, the center provides opportunities for participants to engage with the community by serving in volunteer roles or contributing to local projects in meaningful ways.
Origins of Special Creations
The article also makes note of the community’s decision, around 2018, to open a school for children with special needs. Previously, those children had gone to the local public school district’s special needs program.
But the teaching approach, which included use of computers and iPads, was a mismatch for the Amish lifestyle, according to Neal Miller, board chairman of Special Creations.
Now the community can offer teaching for children with special needs in an Amish cultural setting; as Miller notes, “We have seen a great response from that because the children are more in their environment.”
Opening this school then led to the idea of a training center, giving rise to Special Creations. As you might expect with an Amish community effort, the operation has relied a lot of donations – of the property, labor to build an addition, as well as donations of materials for their products.
Bravo to this initiative, which as it happens is not unique among the Amish (Special Hearts, in the Holmes County, Ohio community, is another example of something similar). Special Creations products are sold in different local Amish stores, and even online, including the New Wilmington-area Simple Life store.
