About Us
Who We Are
reachAbility was born 20 years ago from the combined vision of Dr. Bruce Mills and Tova Sherman. Bruce had been the president of Reach Canada, a national agency providing legal support and education for and about persons with disabilities. Tova was a trainer in the hospitality industry.
After years of living “away” from home, they were both drawn back to their native Halifax where they connected in 1999. They both dreamt of building an organization like Reach Canada in Nova Scotia. So much of Reach Canada’s work dealt with human rights complaints in the workplace, and Tova and Bruce quickly acknowledged that just providing legal services wasn’t going to be enough. They wanted to prevent the injustices their clients experienced, not just help resolve them after they occurred.
Their vision for reachAbility soon expanded to include employment programming and programs to help people develop self confidence. Soon after, reachAbility partnered with the Government of Nova Scotia, allowing the association to become a stronger, more efficient partner to the public and private sector.
20 Years of Caring for People
What We Do
reachAbility exists to serve individuals who face barriers to inclusion and community participation. There’s nothing exclusive about reachAbility, and you don’t need to identify as living with a disability to access our services.
We believe the best way to create an equal playing field is through prevention, not after-the-fact litigation. So we partner with public, private, and non-governmental organizations to provide education and training on building more diverse and inclusive workplaces.
“No one goes nowhere.”
“What are you good at?” Tova would ask reachAbility’s new clients. Too often, the answer she got was “I’m good at nothing.”
We recognize that not everyone will go into the workforce. But we believe that “no one goes nowhere”, so we also provide programs focused on what people are good at and help them uncover those skills and build the confidence they need to succeed in their personal lives.
Through delivering many services to just a few people – reachAbility serves a maximum of 500 people each year – our work supports individuals who want to go somewhere.
Are you ready to go somewhere? Let us help.
“reachAbility changes the world through one hot lunch, through listening non-judgmentally to one client’s concerns, through assisting someone in finding one job.”