Stonington — After activating key cards for upcoming guests to check in, Julia Musgrove and Olivia Bell sat in the lobby of The Whaler's Inn in downtown Mystic last week, putting holiday greeting cards from the hotel into envelopes.

Tuesdays are for working on behind-the-scenes hospitality skills like laundry and maintenance, but this was a Friday, the day for helping out at the front desk.

"I'm already a fairly social person," Musgrove said, making the job site a good fit.

The two are part of a vocational training program called LH Works from The Light House, a nonprofit that serves people with a range of intellectual and developmental disabilities. The program launched last year.

The vision, Light House Executive Director Kassidy Brown said, is for job seekers "to gain the skills needed to attain competitive employment that meets the true needs of our community's employers, at the same wage as their coworkers." He said it's "geared toward people right on the cusp of competitive employment," such as people on the autism spectrum.

"I think my experience here has been enjoyable. I get to learn a lot of different things," said Bell, 21. She's been in the program since the summer, one of six participants at the moment.

Job seekers learn soft skills at The Light House's training facility in Stonington and then put them to use at job sites in the community.

"We don't mollycoddle them," said Whaler's Inn front desk employee Brian Killiany, though he does "try to give them tasks oriented toward their personality as best we can." He also encourages them to come up with local restaurants, shops and  activities to recommend to guests.

Alongside the job seekers and Whaler's Inn staff is Rachel Chimileski, employment specialist at The Light House. After a morning at The Whaler's Inn, she would head back to Stonington with Musgrove and Bell, for lunch, a Zoom session with chef Erika Gradecki, a workshop and independent study.

Some of the work Gradecki does, Chimileski said, might be a utensil quiz or helping the students prepare multistep meals.

LH Works runs Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Brown said the program will typically be one to three years, though someone may join for six months and then be ready to enter the workforce.

Setting up job seekers for success

In Connecticut, people age out of special education programs at 22. At that point, many people end up in a day program, but The Light House wants to give people who may be able to work that opportunity.

"Our philosophy is: We don't do sub-minimum wage. We do competitive employment," Brown said. He said the people The Light House works with "may not present as well in a traditional interview" or may be able to get a job but have trouble keeping it.

To make sure they're a good fit, candidates go through an evaluation process, so an employment specialist and Will Robinson, director of adult transition services, can get a sense of both their social aptitude and how they handle different tasks. Being a good fit also means being motivated to hold a job.

"We don't want to be in a position a year in, where it's not working," Brown said.

Logan Keene, who works in marketing and development, added, "We don't want to set anybody up for failure."

Brown and Keene gave a tour in late November of the bucolic training site in Stonington. It's the location of Horses Healing Humans, which The Light House is in the process of acquiring.

Job seekers spend some of their time here working on life skills, such as budgeting, and some have set the goal of learning to drive.

Outside is a greenhouse built last year, where microgreens such as pea shoots and radish sprouts grow. They're packaged and delivered to local chefs. There's a functioning Airbnb room onsite, which helps job seekers gain some of the skills they would then put to use at The Whaler's Inn.

Light House staff said other community partner sites include the Garde Arts Center, Fiddleheads Food Co-op, Mystic Seaport Museum, Bank Square Books, and Flanders Fish Market. The Light House takes into consideration the needs of the community, and matches people based on skills.

Keene said the ideal structure of the program is that the first year is "very exploratory." Between the Airbnb room, greenhouse and kitchen at the training center, and the community job sites, job seekers get instruction in three tracks: farm to table, the trades, and culture and tourism. At the Garde, for example, Keene said people can get experience in customer service but also in the trades track, doing building maintenance.

While The Light House started developing LH Works in 2019 and launched it last year, staff feel labor shortages make their mission even more timely.

"All that does, to me, is create opportunity for our population, who would normally be passed by," said Brown.

e.moser@theday.com