Our purpose is to bring diversity awareness and education to our community while giving people with disabilities opportunities to showcase their talents. Performing arts opportunities for people with disabilities is almost non-existent. It is crucial that changes occur within this arena for people with disabilities to have full access to our community. Before Special Olympics, they had little or no opportunity to participate in sports. The B.E.S.T. Network is striving to create a model program in performing arts that rivals the Special Olympics and can be duplicated much in the same way. In todays climate, we are challenged to create more interaction with typical people as we create the programming. Expectations of inclusion are far beyond just having their own place to perform. They are that of working along side typical people and being included in the mainstream theater experience. We are actively pursuing these goals by engaging typical youth and young adults on high school and college campuses in creating relationships and becoming mentors to young adults with disabilities through joint participation. As they work together on cultural arts projects, barriers begin to fade away and friendships develop. We recently performed on stage at Just Off Broadway with an array of typical performers. We were the only act to get a standing ovation. Through exposure to our performances the mainstream population is beginning to look to us for our ability to educate and entertain. We performed for The Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City because they wanted to hire a person with disabilities, but were uncertain of the kinds of tasks they could perform. After watching our troupe members they were able to see many possibilities fore the varied talents of all individuals with disabilities. Showcasing talents is a very effective way of showing abilities that can spill over into the workplace.