Brian Dragotto of Millstone, NJ, is a student at The College of New Jersey and a participant in Ortho Clinical Diagnostics’ Co-op Program. As a volunteer at Matheny, he helped resident Natalie Tomastyk, right, with the cookie mix project. At center is adult instructor Rose Sherman.
Students in Matheny’s Adult Services program are hard at work, creating decorative cookie mixes that will be displayed in mason jars. The filled mason jars will be sold at an internal fundraising event to support Matheny’s self-sustaining community garden.
The Matheny adults were assisted in this project recently by a group of college students who are currently part of the Co-op Program at Raritan, NJ-based Ortho Clinical Diagnostics, a division of Johnson & Johnson. The students spend approximately six months at the company, gaining practical business experience. Ortho serves the transfusion medicine community and laboratories around world as a provider of solutions for screening, diagnosing, monitoring and confirming diseases early, before they put lives at risk.
The cookie mix project is an example of activities in Matheny’s Adult Services program designed to instill a sense of self-respect and self-expression among adult residents and adult day health services patients.
