Meet Melissa Barber | K-12 Special Education Teacher and CEO of Coffee, Crafting & Community

We had the good fortune of connecting with Melissa Barber and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Melissa, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
It started when I was a teacher at a public high school. I was a self-contained special education teacher and kept getting asked the same questions over and over, year after year. Parents wanted to know if there were any programs available to their child during summer break and for those graduating what do we do next? Unfortunately the answer to those questions at the time was I don’t know. When finished with their senior year, typically students with a cognitive disability go onto some type of 18+ programing provided by their school district. Generally speaking, these kids are in programs with the same friends that they have known throughout the majority of their life and don’t have many opportunities to make connections with others, like Neurotypical teenagers. With the state of the public school system being what it is, I had been praying hard for some divine intervention for guidance of what to do with my life. My last year as a public school teacher made it very clear that I needed to find some thing else to do with my talents. With the support of my family I resigned in 2022 to work on my mental health and put my family first again. I decided to start my own business, teaching social skills and recreational/art classes to the 18+ population. I quickly realized that trying to do run a business on your own with no experience was very difficult. I knew that if I was going to be successful, I would need help from somewhere. With some more divine intervention, I was introduced to the wonderful, Linda Bartels, who had a very ambitious idea about a service that needed to be created for the special-needs community in Montgomery county. From there, my personal business morphed into what is now, Coffee, Crafting & Community. With the help of some fantastic community leaders, we were able to work together to create a mission for this organization, a place of belonging for a largely underserved population of people in our community.

What should our readers know about your business?
Coffee, Crafting & Community is a unique organization that was created for the benefit of young adults that are 18 years or older with Neurodiversities, IDD & Developmental Disabilities. We decided on this age group because they are the demografic that fall into a gap for services. We want to provide opportunities to those young adults that are graduating or have graduated from high school programs and need to be able to meet new individuals that are like them. Many Low Incidence Population students enter public schools in specialized instructional settings and the friends they make in their classes grow with them throughout their school careeres, with limited opportunities for inclusion and to make more friends. One of our goals is to create a safe space for exceptitional young people to come together and do just that. We wanted to be a hub, centerally located in Montgomery County with the hopes that participants from the surrounding communities would come together to expand their network of friends.

I am excited to see every participant, every week. Each time we get together it feels like it is better than the time before it and that is what I love about what we are doing at CCC. I think we all fill eachother’s cups and that is a good feeling at the end of the work week. We are also in the middle of trying to create some new opportunities for our participants. We want to create times that the participants can out in the communities and practice social and life skills. The goal is have social gatherings out and about, more typical of hanging out like their neurotypical peers do at their age.
I want the world to not be afraid of those that may look or act a little different. Differences are what make the world such an awesome place to reside in. I would rather spend my time with a room full of neurodivergent people than neurotypicals any day. They have the most unique way of looking at the world and solving problems. We have interesting conversations at our events and I love helping others geniunly connect with someone else. That is the hardest part for our population. I am most proud of the personal growth I see in many of our young adults. We at CCC often refer to the participants as “kids” becuase we see them as “our kids” once they attend an event. We want to invest our time, effort, and talents in them to help them reach their full potential. We know that it takes a village to raise a child and a child with special needs requires even more villagers!
We at CCC want to teach our participants how to better communicate, to explore their creative side, and work on independence. Our goal is to hopefully spark a creative outlet that will spill over to their home life and that will be a gateway to generate money for themselves. We also want to be able to one day work on cooking skills and teach them how to make different coffee recipies so that they can bake or make dinners or work at a coffee shop one day.
The creation of CCC has been blessed from it’s inception. We have had amazing people come together from all over the county to give valuable input into it’s formation. We have had expert advice and guidence from the get-go and things have “fallen into place” for us and I truly feel that there are devine interventions keeping us going. CCC started in June of 2023 and we have been growing with new participants almost every event since. We want to be known and talked about for the good we are doing for the 18+ population and need help spreading the word about the work we are doing. We have been getting decient views on Facebook and Instagram but would love more followers. It would be even better if the followers could become participants! We are in the same boat as any other non-profit organization, we are needing money so that we can create some financial scholorships for those that want to attend but can not afford the 40.00 session fee.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I don’t really get out much, I’m a homebody. If I were going to take visitors out on the town I would probably consult Facebook for a list of hotspots to hit.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
First of all, I could not have done this, without the support of my husband, Charles Barber, who supported my decision to leave teaching.
To my three children, Evan, Anisten and Kerra. I am very proud of each one of them and their accomplishments this far.

Linda Bartels with Bella Vita Community had the vision for CCC and contacted the right people and started this adventure
Dr. Maria Quintero with Tri County and her fantastic ever knowledgeable team.
Dr. Amy Wood and Kelly Baughman with Project Beacon Texas for their helpful input, endless knowledge and guidance.
Staci Rae and Jamie Runey with Mosaics, they provide us with a free location to meet which for a nonprofit is one of the largest obstacles.
Tenika Combs with Got advocacy for suggestions, guidance and support.

CCC could not continue to make progress without the help of Staci Rae, Tenika Combs, Dawn Kuhn, and Gayle Fisher who make up our Board of Directors.

And my daughter Anisten Sellers, who volunteers her time at each event to support me, the participants and the vision of CCC.

Website: https://gettingsorted.com/coffee-crafting-community-ccc

Instagram: @coffee_crafting_community

Facebook: Coffee, Crafting & Community