AAPD’s Disability Mentoring Day (DMD) is a large-scale effort to promote career development for almost 20,000 students and job seekers with disabilities nationwide. This year the program is celebrating its tenth anniversary with the program’s kickoff in Duluth, MN, and various activities throughout the U.S.

The American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD), the largest cross-disability membership organization in the U.S., coordinates the program, which is held annually on the third Wednesday in October in conjunction with National Disability Employment Awareness Month.

“Employment is the key to economic empowerment for people with disabilities, and for ten years, Disability Mentoring Day has been connecting employers to job seekers with disabilities, while exposing them to a range of career options,” said Andrew Imparato, President and CEO of the American Association of People with Disabilities. “Disability Mentoring Day is a business-driven program, where DMD employer partners demonstrate their commitment to recruiting and hiring talented people with disabilities. DMD provides the catalyst for forming mentoring relationships between those employers and students and job seekers with disabilities.”

DMD began as a White House initiative with less than three dozen students in 1999. It promotes career development through hands-on career exploration and ongoing mentoring relationships. Local DMD programs are created through a network of 350 volunteer DMD Coordinators in all fifty states and 23 foreign countries. They organize mentoring, job fairs or on-site job shadowing visits between students and job seekers and employers.

Along with 2009 DMD Sponsor and Sponsor of the DMD 2009 National Launch, Wal-mart Stores, Inc., AAPD will celebrate the 10th Anniversary of DMD at the site of its largest rural program in the country, Duluth, MN on Oct. 12 and 13. AAPD is highlighting the Duluth DMD as an example of engaging more than 1,000 youth with disabilities in a one-day career exploration program with an expected 100 national and local employers.

In addition to the career fair, AAPD will also host a town hall forum on green jobs with the Minnesota State Council on Disability; special guest Kathy Martinez , Assistant Secretary of the Office of Disability Employment Policy at the U.S. Department of Labor; and the other 2009 DMD national sponsors.

National sponsors include: DMD Lead Public Sponsor, Social Security Administration; Darden Restaurants, Inc.; Verizon; Job Accommodation Network (JAN); the U.S. Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP); the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM); the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC); Amerigroup; Novartis; PricewaterhouseCoopers; Northrop Grumman; Chartis; and GettingHired.com.

Visit www.aapd.com/dmd for more information about Disability Mentoring Day.