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Project Search participants at the Clinical Center

NIH Project SEARCH is an unpaid internship that provides young adults with intellectual disabilities the opportunity for an independent future. Through a 30-week program of total workplace immersion, each intern acquires work experience along with competitive, marketable, and transferrable skills.The program's primary goal is for each intern to gain successful paid employment. However, the NIH also sees this as an amazing opportunity to access an untapped pool of talented young individuals.

At the NIH, Project SEARCH interns are embraced by the workplace culture. Consistently, NIH worksites report that the hard work, dependability, and genuine spirit of the interns bring out the best in workplace staff.

Project SEARCH and program like it are an important contribution to our society. Recent data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics indicate that the percentage of individuals with disabilities that participate in the labor force is 22 percent, compared with 70 percent for individuals with no disability.

NIH's Project SEARCH is in keeping with the presidential goal of increasing the employment rate of workers with disabilities.

Maureen Gormley, a Project Search grad and Dr. John I. Gallin
Maureen Gormley, then chief operating officer of the NIH Clinical Center, and Dr. John I. Gallin, then director of the NIH Clinical Center, congratulate Project SEARCH graduate Ricky Day.
 
Ashton Bell
Ashton Bell, an NIH Project SEARCH graduate, now works in the Clinical Center's Materials Management Department.
 
County Executive Isiah Leggett and Amethyst Thornton
County Executive Isiah Leggett visited the CC on Dec. 5, 2011, to learn more about NIH's Project SEARCH and met with several program graduates, including Amethyst Thornton, who now has permanent employment at CC.