ReEmployAbility has built relationships with over 35,000 nonprofit organizations across the country where our Transition2Work® program participants can work while helping the community they live in. In California, our partnership with the Dominguez Rancho Adobe Museum helps to ensure future generations will know about their community’s history.
In 1784, Juan Jose Dominguez requested and received the first Spanish Land Grant in California, which he named Rancho San Pedro. It was a magnificent 75,000-acre spread southwest of Los Angeles. Don Manuel Dominguez, Juan Jose’s great-nephew, built the Adobe in 1826, now the Dominguez Rancho Adobe Museum. The Dominguez Rancho Adobe Museum has great historical significance in California, along with being the first Spanish Land Grant, it was the site of the first Air Meet in the United States in 1910, the location of the first manned flight in California, and is also home to the Goodyear Blimp.
The mission of the Friends of Rancho San Pedro (the umbrella organization for Dominguez Rancho Adobe Museum) is to preserve and increase community awareness of early California history as it relates to the Dominguez family, homestead adobe and the Rancho San Pedro. This is accomplished through educational programs and the operation of the Dominguez Rancho Adobe Museum.
“The Dominguez Rancho Adobe Museum offers free-of-charge educational tours and programming to K-12 grade school students,” said Executive Director Luis Fernandez. “Students learn about early California history and its ecology. By offering free educational tours and programs to schools, the museum ensures it can serve all schools in the area, including low-income schools.”
ReEmployAbility is helping the museum fulfill its mission by providing valuable and reliable light duty Transition2Work participants. “While our volunteers from this program will last a varying degree of time, they are able to help in light administrative duties, cleaning and organizing our museum, so that our staff is able to get other tasks and projects accomplished,” said Luis.
Further, many of the participants continue to assist the museum after their assignment is completed and they return to work creating a win-win for museum and the Transition2Work participant.
“[The Transition2Work program] allows our museum to take in volunteers with modified light duty assignments, while giving the injured worker time to heal by benefiting the community through volunteer work…Our volunteers from this program, on average, volunteer forty hours a week and become part of the museum’s success.” said Luis.
If you are in the Los Angeles area and would like more information about the organization or would like to volunteer, please visit www.DominguezRancho.org.
