Kay Center offers employment and sports opportunities to people with intellectual disabilities

A lifelong sports fan, Todd Youngblood came to Kay Community Service Center, a day program for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) in Fort Valley, Georgia, in 1995 and was immediately put to work. “The first thing the board members wanted me to do was ‘clean it up and get heavily involved with Special Olympics,’” he said.

And so, based on his background and passion for sports, he founded Special Olympics powerlifting at the Kay Center. But even though there were potential athletes, Youngblood still had a lot of work to do before anyone started moving weights. They took two classrooms and knocked down the wall in the middle to make a gym, bringing in weights from the school district where Youngblood coached softball. The work was worth it, as powerlifting became just the first step toward integration Special Olympic Games Georgia in the community.

“The state was big on integration and making sure we integrated into the community,” Youngblood said. “So at that time we started powerlifting, United softball, Unified basketball and Unified bowling.”

In addition to being the home for the area’s Special Olympics programs, the Kay Center also provides job training, education, education and support to individuals so they can live independent lives in the community. With the help of local businesses, jobs and transportation to and from those jobs are provided.

Every year in October, National Disability Awareness Month (NDEAM) is being celebrated, with 2025 marking the 80th anniversary of the annual recognition. First celebrated in 1945, in 1988, “Congress designated the commemoration as NDEAM, which subsequently evolved to recognize the importance of expanding opportunities for people with disabilities, including those with mental health problems and other non-obvious disabilities, in the labor market,” reads the U.S. Department of Labor homepage.

Individuals come to the Kay Center with a variety of transition plans and backgrounds. Everyone age 24 or younger must undergo vocational rehabilitation – a process that provides individuals with disabilities with the necessary training to secure, regain, or maintain employment. “Programs like this are so important because not everyone just goes out into the community and works,” Youngblood said. “Sometimes they need that support so they can be successful.”

Just as every employee’s background is different, the Kay Center offers vacancies in a variety of fields.

“We have lawn services, so our lawn service actually maintains the school system where I work and coach,” Youngblood said. “We maintain the school system grounds, the recreation department grounds, and then we have a hunting preserve, a place where they raise trophy deer, and we maintain that property.”
In addition to lawn services, people with IDD are also employed as janitorial service providers and factory workers, manufacturing a variety of products.

“We’re going to make sideshifters and ship them all over the world,” Michael Biron, a Special Olympian softball athlete and a worker at a manufacturing facility, said. “The [Kay Center] is looking forward to us. We go to dinner and stuff like that.” He has been making parts for a long time and is confident in his skills. “They like having us around,” he continued, chuckling.

Thanks to the work of the Kay Center, Biron is not alone. People with intellectual and developmental disabilities find meaningful employment throughout the community, proving the need to emphasize skills in the workplace.

“They see that we’re not too different from them, we work hard just like the rest of them,” said Dion Thomas, a Special Olympics athlete for more than 24 years and a full-time employee of Cascade Corporation. “They know my capabilities, and I know theirs, so we can match each other and achieve common goals.”