Corporate partners from Salesforce visited AHRC New York City’s Manhattan Pre-Vocation program to assist with unique art projects and provide advice on how to market creative works to the public. Salesforce is an industry leader in customer relationship management and other software products.

Allison MartinCommunity Support Supervisor at Manhattan Pre-Vocation, had an idea for one of the art projects—painting ceramic mugs with nail polish–from a family member. “My sister had done a similar project with younger kids and it looked awesome,” Allison said. “I thought it would be a cool project to do here as well.

Later, Allison spoke with Salesforce partners about the second project they would work on, which was creating signs and posters for AHRC NYC’s Day Services track and field meet. The artists had already created a large banner and custom T-shirts for the event, but they wanted to create some additional materials to cheer on the athletes who would be competing in the events.

The theme of this year’s event is ‘Express Yourself.’ The people here wanted to express where they call home, but everybody has a different definition of where they’re from,” Allison said. She went on to say that the Hudson Pre-Voc program has people hailing from all five boroughs and several countries, including Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, and Trinidad and Tobago. “There are different skill levels here; some will need no help at all and some will need a lot of help.

Salesforce partners said they enjoyed the opportunity to interact with people with disabilities for the first time and thanked Karen Zuckerman, Director of Community Partner Engagement, for helping to facilitate the event.