Reclaiming Employment is an interactive online platform that provides self-employment resources for people who have experienced mental health-related challenges around work. All our resources are designed to help prospective and current business-owners build practical skills, gain relevant knowledge, and participate in a supportive community.
Reclaiming Employment offers:
Flexible, self-paced courses
A library full of curated self-employment resources
Community forum for mutual support
Reclaiming Employment offers pathways based on “5 Stages of Self-Employment.”
Our approach to developing Reclaiming Employment uses real-world wisdom, peer support, and the science of online learning to help users achieve their vision of small business success. Our startup resources are developed by people who’ve run their own businesses while facing major life challenges.
Self-employment can be empowering. But people need support to get there. Especially when trauma, discrimination, and self-doubt have been a part of your past. At Reclaiming Employment, our goal is to help prepare you for both the logistics and the emotional ups and downs of business ownership.
Reclaiming Employment will be available via affordable, flexible individual or institutional subscriptions. As of June 2022, we are working with nearly 100 test users on a research study to evaluate the experience and impact of the platform.
Business Directory
Reclaiming Employment maintains a directory of “peer-run” small businesses in the U.S. If you are an individual who identifies as experiencing mental health-related challenges at work and would like to have your small business listed on Reclaiming Employment, fill out the form below. You do not need to have a formal business structure.
Both incorporated and non-incorporated businesses (i.e. sole proprietor/independent contractor) are included in this directory, but nonprofit organizations are not, unless they are operating as a commercial nonprofit that sells products or services to generate revenue.
This project was supported, in part by grant number 90IFDV0016, from the U.S. Administration for Community Living, Department of Health and Human Services, Washington, D.C. 20201.