07-05-2025
USCA LIFE program to graduate its first cohort
AIKEN, Sc. (WJBF)- USCA LIFE. Learning Is for Everyone.
These 13 students, who have intellectual disabilities get the opportunity of a lifetime.
To Graduate. And their parents get to see them.
I asked, 'Who's coming to your graduation?'
'My dad, my mom, my stepdad, his roommate and myself. That's it,' said graduate, Amelia Carpenter.
Once students with intellectual disabilities leave K-12 schools, about 18% of them get a job, making less than $11,000 a year. This makes the USCA LIFE program important.
'To be a productive member of society, we have to be able to regulate emotions and solve problems and talk to individuals and communicate and pay our bills and manage our money. And so all of those daily living and soft skills and job skills are so important because it helps them become more independent. Helps them get a job. Helps them keep a job once they have that job. And then it helps them live by themselves,' said director of USCA LIFE, Melissa Martin
And over the past two years they have shown themselves to be ready for LIFE.
' I just think our students just really, truly show that every day that they can do the same things as everybody else and they can be your friend just as well as anybody else,' said mentor, Skylar Shirey.
'And this program is very great. And if you want to join it, you should because you can get a lot of good experience from it. Yeah,' said Carpenter.
The doors open at 5 p.m. and the ceremony begins at 6 p.m. at the Convocation Center on USCA campus.
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