The paper describes vocational education approaches designed to prepare severely handicapped students for nonsheltered, meaningful work. Training is cumulative, beginning with early childhood training and continuing through middle school, high school, and transition stages. Ecological strategies are advocated to match characteristics of non-school training sites (opportunity for interactions, adequate accessibility and space, access to transportation, access to other community resources) to student characteristics. Procedures involved in securing training sites are noted, includng making initial contacts with community businesses, writing a training agreement, and maintaining and expanding non-school vocational training sites. Emphasis is placed on the opportunity for longitudinal vocational instruction, individual adaptations to enhance maximum participation, and systematic vocational instruction. Appended are samples of a student profile, an initial contact form, an information sheet, an initial meeting form, a site evaluation form, a training agreement form, and a parent permission form for community job training placement. (CL)