From: Tom Sullivan
Executive Director
54 Freedom Foundation
To Whom It May Concern:
The mission of 54 Freedom Foundation is to promote, enable, educate and support employment and entrepreneurial opportunity among 54 million Americans with disability.
With all current data indicating that only 12 to 14 percent of American adults with disability hold paying positions, 54 Freedom Foundation is on a quest to change the parameters through education, networking and business advancement opportunity by supporting those people and organizations that present appropriate business plans with an exciting upside and well thought-out probabilities for success.
We also intend, through our 54 Freedom corporate outreach, to create long-term mentoring programs designed to aid a selected person or persons in navigating the complicated process of fulfilling their professional hopes and dreams. We intend to reach out to those organizations with long-standing credibility in the disability community to aid in our search for those persons with the intelligence to succeed and the drive to commit to the work necessary to make the opportunities we provide a reality.
We are developing an advisory board of national business and civic leaders, professionals in the field of disability, along with disabled Americans who have proven over time to be highly recognizable on the national stage and successful in various fields.
We look forward to changing the landscape of economic possibilities for those Americans with disability who are willing to pay the price necessary for independence. This foundation is not about hand-outs but hands up. We will scrupulously, and with committed intention, work to only support those ideas that blend well thought-out case study with the ability to go through our exhaustive interview process and impress our advisory board with their enthusiasm and committed basic work ethic.
Through this entrepreneurial spirit, the leaders with disability we support will hopefully go on to hire their disabled colleagues, reducing the burden of unemployment and allowing free enterprise to do what it does best; provide space in the workplace for all Americans to have an equal chance to fulfill their destiny as a free and independent people.