Quentin Thomas, 21, dreams of being a chef and having his own television show on the Food Network.

Demetrius Darden, 19, hopes to teach young children.

LEITA COWART/Special (ENLARGE)

Quentin Thomas shows off the egg-and-sausage burrito he prepared for dinner at home. The aspiring chef is a Bridges program participant.

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But both face challenges beyond those typically encountered by high school graduates. Thomas, a 2006 graduate of Martin Luther King Jr. High School in DeKalb County, and Darden, a 2007 graduate of Avondale High School, were special-needs students.

To help them make the transition from the classroom to the job market, both participated in Bridges . . . From School to Work, a program of the Marriott Foundation for People With Disabilities. Both are working to fulfill their dreams.

"I want to be a chef," said Thomas, who has a learning disability. He graduated from Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts–Atlanta, where "I learned how to cook different cuisines," he said. "I know how to cook better."

The Bridges program has helped him find jobs at Waffle House, Levy Restaurants at the Georgia Dome and Arizona's in Stonecrest Mall. He has been a server, cleaner, a busboy and — yes — a cook.

The Bridges program's mission is to "enhance employment opportunities for youth with disabilities," said Allen Brown, the Bridges director in Atlanta. Locally, the program works with about 200 students a year in the Atlanta Public Schools and the school systems in DeKalb, Fulton and Cobb counties. It is funded by the Marriott Foundation, school districts, and government and corporate grants.

Darden, who has mild autism, attends DeKalb Technical College, where he is studying early childhood care and education.

In the meantime, he works as a courtesy clerk at a supermarket, where he bags groceries, returns carts from the parking lot and grabs a broom when the store's public address system calls for "cleanup on Aisle 3."

But the Bridges program helped Thomas and Darden with more than just job placement. While in school and since graduation, they also have learned how to get jobs and keep them.

The program teaches job readiness and employability skills, Brown said.

It includes workshops on interviewing; filling out applications on paper and online; dressing for interviews; writing résumés; resolving conflicts; and keeping jobs by being punctual, having a good attendance record and delivering high-quality customer service.

"They taught me people skills, how to dress and be successful," Darden said. "They taught me what the real world is like."

The Marriott Foundation, which was set up in 1989 by the family of J. Willard and Alice S. Marriott, operates the Bridges program in seven major urban centers, including Atlanta, where the Marriott International hotel company has a significant presence. The Atlanta Bridges program started in 1996.

Most students in the program have been diagnosed with specific learning disabilities, such as dyslexia; developmental disabilities; or milder forms of autism. All receive special-needs services now or got them when they were in school.

Brown said the Bridges program began in response to national studies that showed that high school students with disabilities had poor prospects for employment.

"More than half don't have jobs one year after exiting from high school," Brown said. Bridges "helps ease the transition from the senior year of high school to the work force."

Brown noted that, unlike Thomas and Darden, most special-needs students do not go on to postsecondary education.

Matching up

The program's nine local staff members, called employer representatives, are assigned to school districts. They recruit the students for the program and find employers to hire them.

"We meet the needs of local employers to hire entry-level employees," Brown said.

The employer reps gauge businesses' interest in the program and then drive the students to the businesses for interviews or help them fill out online applications.

"We try to customize the job match to the students' aptitudes, abilities and interests," Brown said.

Not surprisingly, many students interested in the hospitality industry end up at Marriott properties, where they may be employed as housekeepers or dining room attendants. Other employers include retail stores; consumer automotive businesses, such as tire stores or fast oil-change outlets; or large employers, such as Philips Arena and UPS.

Brown said that most businesses already hire people with mild or "hidden" disabilities. "This is not anything they're unaccustomed to," he said. "It's not a hard sell."

He said the program's graduates may need some accommodation in training or in additional explanations to overcome reading difficulties, for example. But he also emphasized that the program's students are motivated to work, have been prescreened and have learned how to be effective employees.

In addition, he said, the employer gets the equivalent of a second supervisor in the employer rep, who can provide additional coaching, training or motivating.

"We will be on the job site to help with any issues that may arise," Brown said.

"Graduates can move to full time or in new directions" toward a lifelong career, he said.

The program typically follows students for 12 to 24 months after high school graduation, as they move from seasonal to permanent employment, advance, earn raises and take on more responsibilities.

The program is seeing positive outcomes, Brown said. About 80 percent of the program's graduates are placed in what Brown called competitive employment, where they are competing with the whole population of job-seekers.

Of those, 75 percent keep their jobs for at least 90 days, and 75 percent of those in the jobs that long make progress by being promoted or meeting other employer goals.

Some have been in their jobs more than three years, Brown added.