ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - This month is National Disability Employment Awareness month and in honor of that there is an employment focused event this Thursday at the Developmental Disabilities Resource Board of St. Charles County.
This is a two part event with headliner Aaron Likens. It is free and open to the public you can register at https://www.ddrb.org/
Denise Cross is the Executive Director of Developmental Disabilities Resource Board of St. Charles County. "Our main purpose is we manage a tax levy that's property tax that the voters approve to be use for people with disabilities. So we fund I think it's around 25 agencies to provide services for people."
DDRB provides support networks and there is a board in St. Louis City, Jefferson, and St. Louis Counties, as well as nearly all counties in Missouri.
And those services are provided across the entire life span of a person with disabilities from early childhood to retirement. Cross says they also have case managers that provide services to almost 1,500 in the community.
Aaron Likens was not diagnosed on the Autism spectrum with Asperger syndrome until he was 20 years old. But he says when he was a child in school little was known about Autism, but despite that, there was Aaron's second grade teacher. "What she did was, near the end of the school year she asked Aaron where is Formula 1 Racing this weekend? I knew it was a track named Silverstone, so I said Silverstone, and then she said, where is Silverstone, so I had to rack my brain on what the ESPN announcer said and I said that's in England. So she followed up, where's England? I don't know, where's England? So using my interest spring boarded my love of the entire world. So, sometimes you don't need to reinvent the wheel or do massive things to plant seeds for potential, just by those small things of utilizing the thing I always wanted to talk about got me learning about other things."
That's just the beginning of Aaron's inspirational story. He is a two time author an ambassador for Easter Seals Crossroads, but his all time love from a child, he is now the Indy Car Flagger. Aaron will headline Thursday's event at Developmental Disabilities Resource Board in St. Charles County.