Asher Johnson-Dorman is making it big on the small screen.
His career got off to a bang with a specialty popcorn business, Asher’s Amazing Popcorn, he founded in February.
Now the 23-year-old InclusionWorks! Saanich participant is in a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) documentary called Employment Matters with Jocelyn Thompson, who participates in InclusionWorks! Victoria, a family-led, Community Living British Columbia (CLBC)-supported community inclusion initiative.
A second documentary, Employment Matters Too, features Brandon Gibb of Chilliwack Society for Community Living, which also receives CLBC funding, and Michael Thompson from Delta.
Edmonton-based filmmaker Brandy Yanchyk pitched the documentary to the CBC. “I have people in my family and in my life with autism and it touched me thinking about how their lives would be really different if they had been offered this opportunity, to have a job,” she says.
Asher’s mother, Catriona Johnson, met Yanchyk through Facebook and, like CBC, shared her enthusiasm.
Catriona, who chairs the CLBC South Island Community Council, which promotes community inclusion for people with developmental disabilities, sits on the Provincial Advisory Committee that advises CLBC’s board. She confesses that, because Asher is not much of a conversationalist, she and her husband did most of the talking on camera.
She hopes viewers “take away a sense of the possibilities for people with developmental disabilities.”
As for her son, he is “kind of excited” about the documentary and happy to be doing something he loves in his job. Asher’s Amazing Popcorn is a hit at Victoria area street markets.
For Yanchyk, the documentaries, which include B.C. and Alberta, emphasize employment is about more than money. It’s about social contact and survival, about having other people who care when parents are no longer around.
“It changes people. It gives them an opportunity to become their own person, without other people influencing their thoughts,” she says. “They can make their own decisions and have conversations that are not connected to their parents anymore. You ‘become’ (more independent). It also makes employers look at accessibility in a better way and see that we can do better.”
More Information
Employment Matters airs Saturday, August 22 and Employment Matters Too airs Saturday, August 29, both at 7 p.m. on CBC TV or online at: cbc.ca/bc.
It will premiere on TV stations in B.C. and Alberta, then hopefully air across Canada, at film festivals and on PBS. DVDs will be available by contacting Brandy at employmentmatterstoo.com.
Here’s a sneak peak of Employment Matters: vimeo.com/132354432 and Employment Matters Too: vimeo.com/134334215.
