1st Annual Bowling for Buddies Tournament Opening Remarks from State Director Patty Evans

BBCA welcomed eight of our Jobs program employers to our first annual bowling tournament, Hollywood Player Goes Bowling for Buddies, to benefit the Jobs program on Monday night, Nov. 7^th at Lucky Strike LA Live!  These were my welcoming remarks

My name is Patty Evans and I’m State Director of Best Buddies California.  I want to thank you all for being here tonight and launching our inaugural Best Buddies jobs bowling tournament, Hollywood Player Goes Bowling for Buddies.  As you know from dealing with Rachel and me, we’ve been working on this for quite some time, and we’re so excited that it’s finally the night!

In today’s economic and political turmoil, all everyone can talk about is creating jobs – why aren’t there more jobs?  What’s getting drowned out in all the noise is that the unemployment rate literally explodes when it comes to adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities.  And while it’s bad all over, in California it’s catastrophic.  We rank 38^th among all 50 states in adults with IDD being employed - 13%; that’s only 95,000 fully employed men and women out of a population of 737,000.  In Los Angeles County, only 24% of adults with IDD are employed, leaving 170,600 without jobs.

Best Buddies CA has been providing our supported employment program since 1997 and since then we have placed nearly 100 adults with IDD in companies throughout the Los Angeles area.  Today, we actively support 35 participants who work for some of the finest, most visionary companies in the southland – you.  Every time a participant finds a job, something absolutely wonderful happens.  That’s person’s life changes profoundly, as do the lives of their parents.  Something shifts as well within the companies and people start to see things differently. 

When I speak to our students in the Friendship Program from high schools and colleges around the state, I remind them that they are now leaders of social change.  Let me say the same thing to you.  You and your companies are improving the society of today and creating a better world of tomorrow.  You may not be able to lower the unemployment rate around the country, but you are changing lives here at home one job at a time.  And from your being here tonight, you are helping us to extend the same transformational opportunities to more and more potential participants this year, next year and for years after.

So, we at Best Buddies CA want to give you all a big hand of thanks and congratulations and wish you all luck in tonight’s first Best Buddies Jobs Bowling Tournament.  Let me introduce tonight’s contenders:

Fiji Water Team #1

Fiji Water Team #2

Fiji Water Team #3

Equinox Century City

ICM

Paradigm

GSO Business Management

OPI

Allan Company

Goldline International

Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart

Office of the Mayor of Los Angeles

and Burn 60

Give yourselves a hand!

I want to give a huge thanks to our Presenting Sponsor tonight, Hollywood Player, the movie-themed online gaming site, and welcome Mr. Dave Long here to tonight. Dave will be presiding over the Hollywood Player video gaming in the VIP room. 

Thank you again for coming and have fun tonight!