StudentsDivisionMeeting-2020NFBPAConvention
Good afternoon, everybody. This is the meaning of the National Association. I'm sorry. Yeah, the Pennsylvania association of blind students. It's been a long day, and it's only noon. I like to introduce Justin saulsbury, who is going to be moderating this meeting today. Justin is our naps rep for this convention, so Justin, I'm going to turn it over to you.
Well, thank you, Lynn. I'm glad everybody's here. so far. I know on the agenda, as we currently have it, everybody's using this time for the next eight minutes to come and settle into the room, make sure you have your food in front of you, etc. And then I will happily be back with an overview of this session and this seminar. All right, everybody, it is now 1215. I want to thank you all for being here. I hope your lunch is as good as mine. And I want to just take a quick minute here to talk through what all we're going to have today. So for the first five minutes that's reserved just for this overview. I'm Justin saulsbury. I am the representative of the National Association of blind students, as well as the second vice president of the National Association of blind students. Happy to be here with everybody today. I do also live in Pennsylvania, I live in West Philadelphia. We've been on the news a little bit lately. But I want to just tell you a little bit about what we're going to see today in this seminar. So for the basically a lot of 15 minute speaker slots we're going to hear pretty soon coming up from Lynn heights, the president of the NFB Pennsylvania who's going to tell us about the role of students in the Pennsylvania affiliate, then we're going to have a nice presentation from Miss Jennifer Kennedy, our national representative and executive director of blind Incorporated, she's going to talk to us about building our future in the National Federation of the Blind, then we're going to have another speech from Daniel Ashman employment specialist at blinding, talking with us about structure discovery training and how that helps us on the path to employment. Then we're going to have a presentation about transition age youth programming from David Dino terrorists. A lot of us know him familiar name and face. And then we're going to hear from Rod adonus, who is the director of the Bureau of line of visual services, it's going to talk to us about what VR can do for us. And after that, at about 135, we're going to have a little coffee break, allow people to do what they need to do grab some coffee, etc, then we're going to come back in fresh and ready to go at 150. So it's a 15 minute coffee break. We're going to go on to talk about training at training centers, we're going to get a testimonial from a very successful young graduate of one of those NFB training centers, he's going to talk for him and I lost my place. So then we're also going to have a personal story from a gentleman named Ren Wang A lot of you may have heard from him before very cool guy with cool life story he's going to share with us, then we're going to have a little I'm going to speak some about working with the National Association of blind students, it's going to talk about what students in Pennsylvania can be doing to be involved at the national level and how the National Student division can help with State students vision functions, then we're going to get to meet the scholarship winners got to bring on Mr. Jim antonacci, past president of the NFB of Pennsylvania and Chairperson of our scholarship committee, to introduce us to the scholarship winners will get to hear from them a little bit, then we're going to have a business meeting. And in that business meeting, it's going to be a pretty bare bones business meeting, we're going to do a little goal setting and we're going to do some elections, put into this, you know, figure out what we want to do for the upcoming year and then figure out who's going to lead us in the process. And that's it. So we'll adjourn later today. But we've now exhausted my time for the overview. So without too much further ado, I'd like to introduce you to my boss in employment and in the Federation. Miss Lin heights president of the NFP Pennsylvania who's going to talk to us a little bit about the role that students really can play in this movement across the state of Pennsylvania.
So thank you very much Justin. It's a pleasure to be here today, both virtually and in person. I know COVID-19 has brought a lot of challenges to all of us in different forms in different ways. So it's really awesome for those of us who could come together here in Pittsburgh. And it's also wonderful to have all the individuals that we have online, as well. So the role of students in the NFB of Pennsylvania? Wow, like, what does that mean? So, first of all, I want to say that, for as long as I can remember, the National Federation of the Blind, a Pennsylvania has always been extremely supportive of its students. If students need assistance and coming to a state convention, or coming to a national convention, we always help our students. If students have difficulty in school, getting the information that they need, or the technology they need, whether it's from the school, or it's from the Bureau of blindness and visual services here in Pennsylvania, we have always made it a point to help to intervene to make sure that students can achieve their educational goals, and then their employment goals on a level playing field with their site appears. Lastly, through our students, we are looking for the next leaders of this phenomenal organization. Our previous in our recent past president served as president of the NRP of Pennsylvania for 18, long years. And it's a lot of work. It's it's it truly is a lot of work. And I do have to give them a lot of credit for serving for 18 years. But not all of us are able to do that. And to some degree, not all of us should really do that. There's a lot to be said, for passing the torch to the next generation, to give new ideas, new thoughts for where the organization needs to go, and how it's going to get there. So you know, so that's what the role of the students is within the organization is to, to come to conventions to meet people to talk to, to talk to blind people who are successful who are gainfully employed, and say, so how did you get where you are, because I want to be where you are. And learn from that experience. And then eventually, you know, get become employed, and take on more of a leadership role. You know, leadership comes in a lot of levels. You don't necessarily have to be the president. Every person in this organization, no matter how old you are, how young you are, plays a significant role in where this movement goes, whether it's going to Washington seminar, and speaking to our congressional representatives and our senators, or it's going to Harrisburg, and talking to our state legislators. The role is extremely important. And those of us who have been in the organization for a while, we're here to support you. We're here to to give you guidance, as you request guidance. So I want to let you know that I am always available. The best way to get me is via email at president at NFB p dot o RG. I'd love to hear from you. I'd love to keep in touch with our Tuesday scholarship winners and see how they're doing.
You know and the rest of you as well because state scholarships come up every year. Some of you here are in high school, or maybe middle school and maybe next year you would want to apply for a state school. worship, maybe next year, you would want to apply for a national scholarship. So, in closing, I just want to say it's a real pleasure to be here with you today. It's a pleasure to have Justin as our naps representative for today. And I really look forward to the to the agenda for this meeting. It really sounds pretty spectacular. I guess I should have had him had Justin look at the agenda for tomorrow's general session. But in any case, Justin, back to you.
Well, thank you, I appreciate it. managed to be nice and concise. So hopefully, our next person is ready to go. But you know, it's always wonderful to make sure that we because as a student division, we are a part of that state affiliate. So hearing from our state affiliate is one of the most important things we can have on our agenda here today. Sorry, go ahead. Hello,
this is Anna Walker. Hey,
I'm sorry, I didn't come in earlier as having a couple of my laptop. I just wanted to say, Thank you, Justin, for being able to put all this together when I couldn't.
Some of you guys might know I've been dealing with a lot of health issues. I it's cool. If you didn't I don't do Facebook or anything. I just wanted to thank Justin for stepping up and I was unable to.
Well, thank you. I appreciate that. You know, since we are a couple of minutes ahead of schedule, probably one of the best things we could do with our time is do pretty much what Anna just role modeled for us. And that is make sure that we all know who's here. Because I as someone with access to the zoom panel and everything I know who's in the room, supposedly. But I don't know who's there in person two. So why don't we all just go around and say all who's here, of course, you've heard from me. I'm Justin saulsbury. We've heard from Anna Walker and Lynn.
I've never been one to be accused of being shy. Hello, everyone from Minneapolis. I'm Jennifer Kennedy, Executive Director of blindness learning and new dimensions. I am here on behalf of President Rick of Bono, and I am super excited to be with all of you. I hope someone that is physically in Pittsburgh can have a Comanche brothers sandwich for me, and I look forward to talking a little bit more about students and how you can get involved.
Awesome, so glad to have you. Well, to see if
I can jump in next being only two floors above Daniel Ashman on the employment specialist and blindness learning in new dimensions coming from you from Minneapolis as
well.
Excellent.
Ralph is here.
The afternoon everyone. This is the Jim antonacci I glad to see all you you folks there and hopefully, all will go well this weekend.
Excellent. Who else is here?
Hello. My name is Obama. And I'm a I'm a student at Penn State University in Chicago. And and why? Why now I'm in I'm in a different different country due to the Coronavirus and international travel which which which Russians, so I, I hope I will return returned to say College in Pennsylvania meeting in January 2021.
Yeah, we'd love to have you back. Yeah.
Glad you're here today. Who else is here?
Michelle Bernacchi I'll go I'll jump in mind as well, since since we had a representative from Happy Valley chapter. I'm now another representative. Heil bar. It's great to hear from you. Glad you're here. That's quite a surprise. So I'm glad you're around. That's it. I'm interested to hear what the future holds with all these fresh young students. That's enough for me to the next person. Thank you.
I can go next. Backup, um, I am imposing. I won the NFB of Pennsylvania scholarship. So that's exciting. I am a senior at Kutztown in the vision program. And I graduate in the spring. So I'm really excited about that. So I guess that's all for me, and I'll pass it to the Hey
guys, I'm the gas ba and I'm also here in Pittsburgh. I'm from New Jersey, and I'm the liaison to the New Jersey, New Jersey student division on our state affiliate board. So I want to come and see what other student divisions around the Northeast Mid Atlantic region are up to.
Hi, my name is Angelina and I am blind and I am in ninth grade.
Hi, I'm Bella girl.
I am also blind and I am in check.
Everybody in person.
We have a couple more that may be trickling in. Okay, we can go back to virtual.
Okay, great. Yeah, it sounds like we've got quite quite a crew. And it's wonderful to see members even as young as sixth grade. That's awesome. Who else do we have?
Hi, can you guys hear me?
Yes. Okay.
Sorry. I've been trying to get it just come off mute here for a couple minutes. And I think I finally got the video and everything to work. My name is Anastasia I am the other scholarship winner. Unfortunately, I can't be there with you guys in Pittsburgh today.
But I am
happy to be here virtually with you all. I'm excited to hear everything that we're going to talk about today. And yeah, I'm just really excited to still be able to participate
in a stage of what year in school are you?
I am a junior this year, I go to Clarion University. Perfect. Thank you.
Glad to have you. Thank you. Anybody else?
I'll just jump in here real quick, Justin. This is Lindsey Palumbo Gifford. I am not a student. But I've been a student a few times. And I've been a state scholarship winner and a national scholarship winner. And it's nice to see and hear so many familiar faces. And I guess that's it for me and hi Happy Valley people that I see as well.
Great. Anybody else? Okay, well, it sounds like we've got a really great crew here. I'm really happy about that. It sounds like we've got some great representation from the Happy Valley chapter. So given that it's a given that that happens to be where Penn State is. That's pretty good to know if anybody's interested in going to Penn State. It sounds like there's a chapter that really supports students there. Now, I would like to allow us to transition into our next speaker, who hails from the great state of Minnesota and currently serves as executive director of blindness learning in new dimensions Incorporated. Miss Jennifer Kennedy, would you like to tell us how to build our future?
Absolutely. It's funny because the you know, each of our trading centers has unique opportunities. You know, whether you're a group that dog sleds goes to Mardi Gras or downhill skis, we're always pushing the envelope and figuring out how it is that we're going to change what it means to be blind. This year is no different with the pandemic going on, and a new social justice awakening in our country. So first of all, I want to thank each and every one of you for being here. This is exactly how we get the work done that we need. Each of you to do, we, we meet, we brainstorm, and then we take action. There are a lot of different opportunities that the pandemic has presented with us. And for you students, there's also been a lot of challenge. Some of you, it sounds like are in the grade school K through 12. And you have been off whether it's was doing remote instruction early on, whether it's not being able to see your friends that you may see on a day to day, offer your high school for your college friends are having to find out how do you get accessible materials when there's no disability service that's coming into you in your living room. Now, it's not like you can walk across campus and get those things anymore. So I want to first recognize that all of you are already building that future by being here and saying, Hey, I'm here. And what I have to say is important. Your network is going to be the thing that will continue to help you along the way pandemic are not the National Federation of blindness here in the state. I joined the Federation in 2001. During my banquet speech, I'm going to talk a little bit about that because the Pennsylvania affiliate was one of my very first memories. And it was great to see Jim antonacci, actually on this, on this hole, or on this meeting today, because he was one of the first Federation is really left an impression on me. Having a student division is very important. And it's also very, very challenging. It's challenging, because nobody stays a student forever. Well, perhaps if you decided to go on to get your PhD, you might be a bit longer than some of us. But education eventually ends. And that means that we have to pass the torch on to the next person. I know that a couple of the people who are with us here today have been very successful in their educational careers, and have transitioned on. It's neat to have our scholarship finalists with us, because you really are you igniting that tradition of the investments that we make in our students. So with that, what are things that you can do now? Well, you're doing part of it. You're being a student, and you're getting to know the National Federation of the Blind through this convention this weekend. How do you meet other students? If you aren't familiar with our organization, we are one this is one piece of the larger National Association of blind students. And Mavs as they're known, has done a tremendous job in making themselves heard. While we're observing social distancing, and working our way through this Uncharted time, there are I think it is a weekly Justin, it feels like it's every other day. But there are navs meetings for different committees, as well as activities that go on if you have not done so I really encourage you to check out the National Association of blind students who are painted. That's navs link that Oh, RG. And see what are the events going on? They have some fun evening events that are hosted by local groups. So I know there's been McNabb's, which is the National Association of blind students chapter here in Minnesota. They've done a trivia night, I know there's been karaoke nights. So that's a way you can meet people that perhaps maybe just maybe you might not have crossed paths with before. After all, when we're in a hotel of 1000 plus people milling around, it's hard to distinguish who's a student and who's not.
Later this year, we will be or not this year, in the beginning of next year, we will be having our annual Washington seminar. Now, that is going to be held at the beginning of February, February, the eighth will be our great gathering in and it will be held virtually I know I was really looking forward to being in our nation's capitol too. But this gives a really cool chance for each and every one of you to attend. Happy Valley. If you don't know who your local congressperson is, I encourage you to do that. Meetings right now at our nation's capitol are being held virtually. So that means that it's no longer Hey, there's only three people that can fit in the new congressman's room. It's how many people can you cram on zoom and not pressure bandwidth. We've talked a lot about educational needs. For those of you who are in high school or lower. There was work that was done by the National Federation of the Blind to pass legislation to really emphasize the importance of textbooks and other accessible materials. That's been something now that we've taken on to the college level of the aim high app, and been able to introduce that bill and weave things in that will allow you to be able to participate fully in the School of your choice. We don't know yet what the initiatives will be for the congressional A group that's coming up at the beginning of 2021. But I guarantee you, it's going to be something that will impact each and every one of you, whether it be immediately, five years or 10 years, and we're going to watch your enthusiasm. The student division also some times is looking for personal stories, students have a unique perspective because you have the lived experience of today. be watching for those alerts because when those student stories are, look be looked for. I know of 10 people now that we can tap here in Pennsylvania, and I would anticipate, Justin and Lynn know, a few more, or national scholarship application has officially launched as of November. The first is the largest scholarship program that is open to the line students in the United States. 30 scholarships are awarded to outstanding students who happened to be blind. Because of how important that investment is here, that scholarship pool will open four months from November one to march 31. And I encourage you to get your application in early. One thing that we've noticed is the process by which getting things such as your transcripts does take a bit longer, because of the amount of work that's being done remotely, I would say that waiting until March, the first to try to request one of those transcripts might be a bit late. Also remember that your affiliate president has to do an interview with you. And so you want to give Lynn time to not only write a nice letter about you, but to get involved so that she really believes in the investment that you make those president letters mean a lot to the scholarship committee because we know that they know you far better than we know that we can get to know you all through your essay.
Take a look here. Okay. This past summer, we had a chance to take some of our programming for youth virtual on two of our training centers, Louisiana and Colorado held their summer programs virtually. And they did them in a way that was a little bit different with modules. I know other state affiliates have hosted their own programs for working with what we would normally consider the transition age ages 14 to 42. And I have no doubt that that programming will continue. The science group has been very active in this tool and making sure that there are things that you can experience, even from the comfort of your own home. They just completed what was known as the stem to you program in Home Edition. We don't have word yet what will be this spring, but I'm willing to bet that there will be something good that and Neil and Karen Anderson, Karen Anderson, our Director of educational programming at the German Institute, will have for us. I want to stop now. And I would like to have an opportunity for you students, if there are things that you would like to know, or questions that you have about blindness as a student, things that you've heard about, or things that you do want to you know, make requests of that I could take back the president with the bonus of love to be able to do that at this time.
Open Mic for whoever wants it.
If not, I want to have a shameless plug for a couple of other things. I know students are super busy. Some of you are probably either wrapping up some projects mid semester or the end of a quarter. But there are all kinds of publications that I want to encourage you to read. Now I know I know you're doing lots of reading already at home. doing it for school. It's probably the way in which you're communicating with your friends is reading on your iPhone. But how many of you are podcast listeners? I'd be willing to bet there's at least a couple of you.
Yes.
Perfect. There are three main podcasts that the NFP puts out that I would encourage you to get into your podcast app and get them queued. So that way when you're up and you're doing laundry or maybe you're out walking your dog, you can get caught up on the latest national Federation of the Blind news. The first one is our publication of the Braille monitor. That is our monthly meeting. That is our monthly publication. It will have some fun little tips. For example, the January issue will talk about the legislative priorities that we'll be doing in our Washington seminar. There'll be a piece I'm sure talking about our scholarship program. And it was just fun things to read. Dustin has written several really interesting pieces that I've enjoyed looking at over the years, it's also a great place to see what have people been up to around the country. The second one I want to encourage you to check out is what's known as voice of the nation's blind. It's sort of like watching a talk show between and the Lewis, our executive director at the Jernigan Institute, he sort of like present riccobono, his right hand man and all of the programs that were involved in, as well as directing legislative initiatives. and Mrs. riccobono, Melissa riccobono. And she, she was many, many hats, I think, one of the most exciting hats that she wears as a as a blind parent. And so her and Neil have a 30 minute podcast every month, and they feature different people on this podcast, and have a real discussion. And so it's a very laid back atmosphere. It's a lot of fun. One of my favorite ones that they did talk all about audio description, and how we got involved in audio description. Why did we decide to get involved in audio description office for a while, the Federation sort of stayed on the outskirts of that. The last podcast I want to mention, is our podcast. And I just recently learned about this is our imagining our future. And that is a monthly, there's a monthly bulletin, the President riccobono puts out and it has some quick updates, supposedly, that is available via podcast I have not yet I have not gone and looked for it in my podcast feed. But I guarantee you, I will be doing that, before the weekend is up to make sure that I'm getting that update. It'll allow you to see in real quick, probably 10 minutes or less, what the latest and greatest is happening around our organization. One final thing as far as technology in the National Federation of the Blind, the app in the Connect app had a reboot, and I encourage you to check it out. There is a lot of new content, it definitely works better. If you're like me on your smartphone, that's kind of your connection to the world right now. Whether it's through Facebook, FaceTime, email, getting your school assignments, but there's a wide variety of things that you can connect into within that app, including checking out some of the podcasts that I've talked about. I want to leave you with this. You are standing on the shoulders of giants. And when I say that, what I mean is the students that came before us, and before each of you has helped bring the National Association of blind students and the students of Pennsylvania into the 21st century. We don't have all the answers right now. But with your help your creativity and your energy, I know that we're going to continue to come up with answers to the challenges that students in the future will face. Thank you all very much. And let's go build the National Federation of the Blind.
Thank you very much, Miss Jennifer Kennedy, we're super glad to have you, like I said all the way from Minnesota as our national representative. And keeping in line with the Minnesota vibe, we're now going to turn our attention to Mr. Daniel Ashman also blind Incorporated. And you know, we're we've heard a little bit already from Minnesota, we're going to keep hearing more. And especially, you know, there's this really cool opportunity to go and get some training that we'd love to learn more about and, and so we want to hear from Dan now. So Dan, take it away.
Thank you very much, Justin. Thank you for inviting me here and thank you all for being present. Initially, I began working with our pre employment transition services, our priate students and Virginia through a concentrated four week long which eventually turned into a six week long program. We titled it The Life program that focused on comprehensive blindness skills, training, and work related skills. From that point, until now, I've done a myriad of different things within the blindness rehabilitation field. But coming full circle having moved out to Minnesota, I now work as the employment specialist with blindness learning and interventions Incorporated. I'll be at my focus is no longer with youth, much to my chagrin. More to the adults. If you want to know it's my chagrin, you'd have to contact me on a off time and we can talk about how I feel much more engaged working with the younger generation. But that's a DVM point. What are some of the takeaways that we can look at. And this is something to keep in mind. takeaways, when we talk about career related skills are not specific to blindness. These takeaways are generalized to everyone. Your application, including your resume, is a way to justify why not to hire you. Your interview is a way to justify why to hire you. Not many individuals Think of it this way. And that in itself, sets us up at a disadvantage. Because we don't know where to focus our preparatory skills at and were to really put our all in the process. We know what we know. But we don't know what we don't know. We value our knowledge. What it is that we know. And many times we don't want to learn more. Or for some reason, we cannot learn more. In that process, we undervalue what other individuals know. There's a lack of understanding in how we present ourselves, predominantly, in one our body language is showing. We need to learn that our story is as important as everyone else's. Once we know that, we have the ability to enthusiastically tell our story. And I'm going to focus on the our story. throughly is about you. I tell all of my students that those who go through our career track it is all about you. Where else do you have the ability to fully dwell in an egotistic centric environment, we try not to go too far ahead of ourselves. But we want to be able to embrace it. There's an overlying failure to identify the employers needs and to make discussions about their needs the central facet of our interview, there's a recurrent and persistent problem with everyone not knowing how to truly talk about themselves, and relate who they are, through their skills and experiences with those of the employer that they are interviewing with. We don't always know that experience does not equate to ability, and then credentials are not considered competency. I just went through a lot of takeaways, and many individuals might be thinking to themselves, how does this relate to structure discovery training? What does nine months of training do for me to mitigate some of these takeaways and set us up for greater success? To words? Why in you, when I've worked with my students, we've already talked about the youth part. The second part is Why? Because it really is all about why are you interested in the job? Why would the employer want to hire you? And overall, why you when we put it together? Why are you set aside and an outlier? In the best of ways than those who you're applying with? Or against? Simply but by learning comprehensive skills of blindness, specifically modeled through the structure of discovery training method, individuals are most able to answer the why you through both the asked and the unasked questions because you can believe that you're going into the interview, and you're going to be asked your behavioral questions. You're going to be asked your experiential questions, you'll be asked the pitch questions. You might even be asked some nonsensical questions, my personal favorite to answer.
But what you're not going to be asked are questions about your blindness specifically, but you still need to know how to address them. By being able to model comprehensive skills, you're able to passively influence the interviewing panel, both pre interview during the interview and post interview. And that's a powerful facet. You'll also have the confidence to be able to document who you are, what you've done, and what you can do. Your you're trusting yourself that you've learned through your nine months of training, learning methods that push you outside of your comfort zone. will instill trust of yourself. In other people, they'll begin to trust what you can do for them. They'll also trust what you're telling them. You're also more readily able to understand what you can offer to the employer. Because it's not always just about what the employer is going to offer to you. As a matter of fact, very rarely is it what the employer is going to offer to you. It's what you can offer to the employer. Remember, above all, that when you start to work through this process, you want to be an angel. And I'm not talking about a divine being a heavenly entity, I'm talking about a n g L, we can look at it as a person of exemplary conduct. These are things that you do not want to do to be an angel. And we take this in a grand scope, both on the interview, as well as in our interactions with other people. We don't want to a a grand dies, or exaggerate our experiences, who we are. Remember, listen to other people. In the moment, take in what they have to say. And don't always try to put yourself in their shoes. their experiences are unique to who they are, just like yours are to you. Don't exaggerate them. And in angel is for negativity, leave it behind, it's toxic. It doesn't do us any good bringing it into any environment that we're in. G is gossip. You better believe that if you're gossiping, in an interview, around co workers around fellow students, those individuals are going to assume that you're going to gossip about them. When you're no longer there. Like negativity, it hurts us always around. He is for excuses. Don't bring those into our house. We want to own our mistakes. And then we want to talk to individuals about what we learned from those mistakes, and how that transfers in relates to them. This is also true within our structure, discovery process, mistakes are going to happen. Don't try to make excuses for them, analyze them, and grow. And then finally, L is for lie. Don't ever lie, especially not in an interview process. It'll cost you your job. And it'll follow you along through the entire course of your career. Much like Jennifer said, I want to open this up to individuals for questions that you might have, or comments, knowing that this is only the tip of the iceberg. And then if you want to delve deeper, come and see me. It's not that cold. It was only seven degrees today. Does anybody have any questions? For me?
Yes, Daniel.
Sir.
What what is what is in what is the name of the name of the your program for employment specialists?
I am the employment specialist at blindness learning and new dimensions blind incorporated in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We're a full time comprehensive rehabilitation Training Center focused on structured discovery method training.
There the website or
we do www dot wind Inc. dot o RG. I can place that in the chat.
Actually, I cannot place that in the chat. I do not have chat feature. But you can google it some online and find us.
Okay, thank you.
You're very welcome.
So this is just an I have a question for you, Dan. And I've heard that blinding has a college program. Would you mind talking a little bit about what that is?
Absolutely not. I have absolutely nothing to do with it. But I feel pretty confident I can talk about it having built a couple of these myself. Our college program is where we work with individuals who are either going to be transitioning into college or who are currently enrolled in college, where they can come and work with us over the summer months or when they have a break within their schedule to learn skills, blindness that specifically relate to the classroom environment. while they're here, they can be taking classes or they can be solely focusing on the blindness related skills. we're assessing with much of the same metrics that we use within our adult program. But we try to contextualize within the college environment, I know that Jennifer Kennedy knows a little bit more about this that I haven't talked about. And I'm pumped this over to her if she's able to feel this.
Certainly,
the college prep specifically has a proponent of it, that really looks at the computer use with all of the necessary tools for college students, for example, PowerPoints, interacting with courseware, researching papers, making sure that you know how to format them and being able to use readers. So while you're taking some of our core classes, that includes pain travel, medications, which is a hybrid of Braille and technology, technology, trading, and some home management, we take pieces of each of those and tailor them. You know, if you're really fascinated by the idea of easy African red goo Express for your college dorm needs, that is a thing you could do with the whole management area. Being able, though, to spend time alongside some of our adult students, what we found is that they have a connection, because our adult students who are either finished with college or they are have work experience, they can spend time mentoring all of you, and helping you build that web of connections, and that network so that when you go back to college, you have other resources to go about in there. We also include you on our confidence building activities, some students who do college prep actually will do two summers of it. And we also take into account what you may have as far as you're studying. So let's say you're a music major, we need to make sure you have a piano or a full size keyboard so that you can still participate in your music classes in the evening, we'll do that are being able to spend time navigating the college campus, our student apartments are actually right on the University of Minnesota campus. And so it gives you a chance to do some college travel. I know that for me when I went to training that was really important. I wanted to be able to spend time learning how to mental math on college campus, and then take it with me wherever I wanted to go. Thank you.
Awesome. Anybody else have any questions?
barring any questions, what I'd like to end on is that one of the primary things that we are continuing to try to evolve is our network of employers that we work with, to provide opportunities for individuals to practically apply the skills that they learn while they're in training within an employment field. I make no guarantees at the present moment due to COVID. But I would like to say that it is going to be a primary thrust of mine in the year 2021 to continue to diversify what options we have.
Justin, thank you very much for the time. Thank you all. And I hope you have a great convention. I look forward to talking to you tomorrow as well.
Thank you so much. We really appreciate it. And you know, it's such a wonderful opportunity I happen. Just as a quick personal testimony. I am a graduate of a very similar Training Center and strongly recommend that people look into that kind of thing because it certainly changed my life and made my life a whole lot easier after I did it. So so glad to have you guys here. Now Next up, we're going to hear from a gentleman that is a very familiar name around the Pennsylvania affiliate. You guys may have heard of Mr. David Dino terrorists who is the owner of sky's the limit communications. And he does a lot of really cool transition age youth programming. So that's a new theme for a lot of us but we'd love to have him come and tell us about it.
Can you hear me okay?
Yes. All
right. Very good. Very good. It's so nice to be with you today. My name is David Dino terrorists and wow so much I'd love to share with you I've I've been really enjoying doing a great job Justin really enjoying this student meeting and, and I just it's great to be here. So I always like to start with something just a little bit funny. And I hope that This works. So I, and it's you know, Justin, it's about employment too. So it's an employment story. So I think everyone would appreciate this. So there was a gentleman he was looking for a job. He was looking for a job he couldn't find when he was out of work for a while. And, and, and someone said, You know, I hear that the zoo is hiring here. The zoo was hiring, oh, I don't know anything about working the zoo. We go if you want a job bad enough. And there, that's who's hiring, you should go and check it out. So he said, All right. So we went down to the zoo. And he, he, he met with the zookeeper. And the zookeeper said, Oh, yeah, yeah, that one job that we had, yeah, we filled that. Sorry, that we don't have that job anymore. Sorry. Okay. And he said, You know, I don't know if you'd be interested in this. But he said, Are our prize gorilla? Bobo? Just just died a couple days ago. And, you know, I was wondering, would you be maybe interested in dressing up in a gorilla suit? And, you know, entertaining our guests. So I've never done that before? Well, that's the only job I got. So, you guys, well, you know, I'm willing to give it a try. He's All right. All right, great, great. Go over to human resources and find out if they have a gorilla suit. So he went down to human resources, and he, he Human Resources miraculous, he had a gorilla suit. So we that, you know, he said, All right, well, what I do now is we'll just go and go in the gorilla pen and you know, and mimic what the people are doing, you know, and, and, you know, try to make them laugh, entertain them, engage them. Oh, okay. He said. So he went in there and he was jumping around having fun. And you know, the people would come in wave and he would wave back and mimic what they did. And then he noticed he looked up and he saw he noticed a trapeze. You notice that strappy is a swing above the the cage because you know, I wonder if I could just jump up. I wonder if I could just jump up and grab that he jumped. So he jumped up and he was able to reach and he grabbed and he started swinging back and forth back and forth. And he noticed he noticed that the higher he swung eat, the higher he swung, the louder the crowd cheered. And the more enthusiastic he got, the more enthusiastic the crowd got. And the higher East one, and he swung so high, and he lost his grip. And he launched himself high above the cage. And he wound up flying into Oh, no, the lions den.
Oh,
he was Oh, what what now What now? And the lions started screaming Help. Help is got to be something you can do to help. And the lion ran and jumped on top of them and said, if you don't shut up, you're gonna get us both fired. Well, alright, well. Well, wasn't that funny. But we don't want you to shut up. We want you to speak up and welcome to the NFB student division. And welcome to the convention, we want you while you're here, we want you to speak up. And we want you to ask questions, and we want you to be involved. And we want to hear your voice because that's what makes these meetings, a lot more fun and a lot more interesting. Lynn heights when she was speaking before, she said a couple key words. And when you when Lynn speaks, people listen, right when when Lynn speaks, people turn their head to hear what she's got to say. And when she said a couple of words, she said mentoring and she said expectations because I wrote them down. I've got them right here in my note taker right in front of me. And she said mentoring and expectations. And when I was 21 years old, I had gone totally blind from retinitis pigmentosa when I was 19 years old. I was 21 years old. And I don't know if I'm like any of you, students, you students, maybe in school or maybe you students of life, but like I didn't want to be one of those blind people. And I just didn't want to hang around with blind people. I wanted nothing to do with any of it than that. Forget about it. I'm not going to any of those meetings. So I went to this one event at the Library for the Blind because they were having a technology event. And I love technology I loved I knew that access equals success. And when we can access the same information as our classmates, neighbors, colleagues or peers, then we can get the same education, the same training and of course, the same jobs. I loved what technology allowed me to do. Well, I was 21 and I went to this conference because I wanted to learn more about technology. And they said, oh, oh, it's time for the guest speaker. I'm like, I don't want to listen to any guest speaker. I wasn't here. Oh, yes, everyone's got to go and go. And the guest speaker was a gentleman by the name of Dr. Kenneth Jernigan. And he was president of National Federation of the Blind. He was the keynote speaker. And he said something that struck a chord with me. And maybe it will with you. He said something. He said, it's respectable to be blind, it's respectable to be blind. Did I really believe that? As a totally blind 21 year old college student? No, if I was to have considered the question, the answer would be a resounding no. How do I know that? Because I wouldn't use the technology. I wouldn't use Braille. I wouldn't use my cane. I didn't want to hear about any daily living skills, I didn't want to hear about any type of alternative techniques. I learned that the hardest place to use a cane was the street that you lived on. But when I started to meet people, meet people when Dr. Jernigan said it's respectable to be blind. And then he started talking about all the skills that someone needed to be successful. And he started talking about the communication skills and the listening skills, and the skills to travel independently. And he talked about people who can be blind, they can be business owners. And he stretched my imagination, he raised my expectations that day, and once your imagination is stretched, it'll never go back. And like Jennifer said, we're able to stand on the shoulders of giants. How can and you can too. We know that none of us are smarter than all of us. I have been so blessed to have stood on the shoulders of giants. And you can too. One of my favorite speakers is a gentleman from Pennsylvania. He recently passed away his name is Charlie tremendous Jones. And he said this, we are simply made up of the books we read and the people we meet. We are made up of the books we we read in the people we meet. And we know that readers are leaders and the more you learn, the more you earn, what are you reading today?
Every morning I get up and I throw the covers off. And I say this, I believe something wonderful is going to happen to me today. And then I get up and go look for it. And one of the things I do first things I do is I grab my iPhone and i i read NFB Newsline. And if you haven't downloaded NFB Newsline, the latest version is fantastic. readers are leaders The more you learn, the more you earn. I read the front page of The Wall Street Journal every morning, and I read the Associated Press Pennsylvania, you've got to know what's going around going on locally, statewide, nationally and internationally. Being a good reader being a good student. Yes, we've got to use Newsline. Yes, we've got to use MLS Bard. Yes, we've got to use Bookshare. Yes, we've got to use Apple books. Yes, we can use audible. We've got to use every tool we can. And I want to share this too, because I've been to so many of these events. And I've been so blessed to be asked by Joe Ruff, hello, the National Federation of the Blind in 1992, to be the the coordinator of j ob job opportunities for the blind that I did that for 10 years. And I worked with a woman by the name of Lorraine rovid who would stretch my imagination. And when I worked with Lorraine rover because I volunteer the importance of volunteer we can't stress it Yvonne, you can't spell volunteer without you in it get involved. Get involved, right we learned the law of inertia, things in motion stay in motion things that resonate wrestlers acted upon by a greater force. This convention can be a greater force to get you moving. To get you moving to get you closer to your James because I was involved with the NFB and job opportunities for the blind. I learned how to write press releases. And I learned how to schedule and arrange events. And I learned how to to coordinate I've learned how to write media releases post and pre and post. And because of those skills I learned I'm able to use those skills today to run our small training firm. We have contracts, several states, delivering trainings on the topics of leadership, diversity, resiliency, employability and advocacy. But because it was because of the skills I learned when I was volunteering, those same skills, right those skills, those skills, I learned now pay the bills. So when we come to these events, I love the acronym I love acronyms, right acronyms, but a nice handle on things for us. We come to these events to get hope hlp. We hear other people's experiences, students hear other people's experiences, the good ones and the bad ones. hear other people's experiences, we come to these events, to hear other people's experiences.
So we can understand, remember and believe, hold on, possibilities exists. Yes, it's respectable to be blind. Yes, I can have and do and become the person I want to be. Yes, I could live the life I want. So when we go, we come to these events to get hope. We hear other people's experiences, to be reminded, hold on. possibilities exist. Because when we go out, when we go out to where we live, work and play, there'll be people out there who don't have high expectations. And we know that no one rises to a low expectation. So if you better have high expectations for you, so everyone else can because if you don't have high expectations for you, no one else will either. So the importance of having high expectations, having mentors getting involved being a great networker right notices network notice not net sitter net, think being a great networker asking lots of questions, getting involved. If you do those things, students, then you're going to learn a lot. You're going to make friends, you're going to have fun, and you're going to build a network that's going to help you not just today, but next week, next month, next year, to help you to be the best that you can be. I have been so blessed that I've been involved by the NFB, I have family. No, I have family and I have friends from this organization for many years. And I know that my life is tremendously better. Because I got involved in the NFB. And I hung around people who believed in me when I didn't believe in myself. And now I'm able to encourage others. And you can too. So Justin, and Lynn, and everyone, I want to hope you have a wonderful convention. I want to encourage everyone to ask lots of questions, get involved, learn a lot, make friends and have fun. And if you do that everyone will have a more enriching experience. So Justin, I know I might have went a little long. And I apologize for that. I'd be happy to, to answer any questions or if you'd like to email me real fast, Dave da, ve at possibility thinkers dotnet da ve at possibility POS s IB I ll t y thinkers. dotnet. And it's a privilege to be with you today. Good luck. Continued success. And God bless you all.
Wonderful. Thank you so much, Steve. That was excellent. And you are in fact right on time. So everything is very good. And uncertainly I wish that I had access to mentors and programming like David Dino terrorists and the programming that he runs when I was in my transition age years. I'm now 31. For those of you who don't know, my hairline says I'm a little older than that. And you know, I am still on my path. But I think I'd definitely be a lot further along if I had had those good influences in those early years. So definitely take advantage of that. Every chance you get. And as I looked down our participant list, it's not totally clear to me if rod Elsa Donis is here rod, are you here?
Maybe he's gonna come in right at the time that his presentation starts which is right now. Give him a quick second. And if not, then I'll perhaps see if I can jump another speaker into this slot and maybe we can accommodate rod if he gets here later. Do we have Jason Polanski on the line? Is Jason there in person? No.
Okay.
Is he at the convention in person though? Yes, he is. Okay. So he's on in 15 minutes. I was going to slide him
up, but
all is good. Justin, if you're trying to continue to do that a little I'd be happy to answer any questions if anyone had any questions. I just wanted to Yeah, be mindful of time. But I'd be happy to answer any questions if you had any.
I am, you know, Justin, the one thing that I wanted to share as you're working on that is, like, like many of you, I have been fortunate to be asked to do lots of presentations. And so I came up with, I believe was was, you know, I wanted people to have an easy way to remember, what if people didn't think the blind people could do things, you know, then everything was going to be harder. So, you know, when I worked with employers, or worked with Lions Clubs, or any meetings, you know, I, I came up with the ABCs, of blindness, and I came up with them for me. So I made sure I covered lots these things when I was covering, you know, speaking to a group, but then I also thought it might be useful if anyone's speaking to a club, the A, the A's, and the B's, and the C and D, and the E with the A was for access equal success, right, the importance of access and assistive technology, and can we access the same information, and then the B was for Braille and for literacy, because this statistics show that, you know, people there are less people are reading Braille than ever before, that's really unfortunate. You know, I, Leonardo da Vinci said a bunch of drops of ankle help you think and I like the thought a bunch of little dots helps me, you know, learn and remember lots. And so the importance of Braille. And, you know, there are statistics that said that, you know, me 29% of people who are blind read Braille, but out of that 9% 85% are competitively employed, that, you know, the proof is right there. The so as for assistive tech, B is for Braille, the C is for cane travel, can you can you get from where you are to where you want to go independently, you know, there might not always be an elbow there. And, you know, can you travel from where you are to where you want to go independently, because if you can't, you might not be able to get the best education and training, and job. And then the day, of course, is your daily living, you know, dress, dress for success, just to impress, dress for more, and not less, we've got to, we got to be dressing, right? You dress right? people treat you, right. And if you dress, you know, shabby, people are going to treat you that way too. And, and, and, and then of course, if we do the ABCD, well, then, you know, I believe that, that they'll help us get an education, and it'll help us to get employed, and help us to be independent. So those are some of the things that I've also found to be useful, because if people don't understand how we can do some really simple things, they may never even get to consider how we may do some complicated things. Justin, yeah, so
you know, um, this next 10 minutes left now basically, that that had been allocated to rod if I don't have a cancellation from him. But if we assume that we have another 10 minutes of free time to talk, what we were going to be talking about, or what rod was going to talk about, is what VR can do for you as a student. And I know that David, you know, a thing or two about that. And, you know, if you care to, um, you know, give us for those that maybe don't really know, those little secrets about what VR has available and stuff like that, that that sometimes could help. Like, I'll start by asking a question, if you wouldn't mind answering it. You know, a lot of times, we are told, oh, well, VR can't pay for that. VR can't pay for that. What are the limits on what VR can pay for?
Well, you know, that's a great question, Justin. I'm not the the best expert. But I'll certainly give it a try. It really comes down to
what's in your plan? What's in your plan? Is there a plan? You know, the plans Justin start in high school, or even earlier, but it's so important that you know, as students, and it's appropriate that we talk about this? Justin, the students need to have, you know, have an IEP, an Individualized Education Plan, Individualized Education Program, right. So when you're in high school, you that that plan is really a contract between the parents and the school district and the parents in the state. students in the school district. So what's in that plan? So I would highly recommend you know, that you make sure that you have mom, dad, teacher, parent, Guardian, special ed director, TVI VRC, that the things that should be in that plan Justin are about the the those ABCs the, you know, the access technology? Is there something in that plan about access technology? Can you write things down independently and retrieve them later. Because we know that that's a basic skill that will help you in high school, college and work. But if you can't write something down and retrieve it later, you're going to have a hard time writing down your homework assignments and getting it done. So think about in the IEP, assistive technology, think about those literacy skills. Think about the travel skills, think about the daily living skills. And think about the statistics say, Justin, and I know you know this, that high school students that have summer weekends or evening employment opportunities are more than two and a half times more likely than students to find work and students who don't have those experiences. So I think you having something about internships in that IEP, something in there now. So I think those are all very important things. Other things, what that VR can do? Well, it really depends on the resources that's available to the, to the agency, and you know, at the time, I mean, you know, an agency can span resources they don't have. So I think that, you know, working, you know, having a positive relationship with your VR counselor with your TVI is really, you know, they're part of the team, you know, teamwork makes the dream work. And so, you know, you know, having them on your team, and, and like, Is it always going to be a good positive relationship? No, no, and I would get calls all the time, hey, you know, I don't like my counselor, I want to change it. Well, you know, we can always do that, we can always change it, you know, and, and just like, when you're in college, you know, you can always change your roommate right away. So you know, some some things, we just have to learn how to navigate, we have to be, you know, be be good problem solvers. So, you know, when we just can't say, Oh, well, it's too hard, I'm not going to do it, you know, just in the five words that I've seen stop more people than anything else is, I don't feel like it. You know, well, why didn't you study for the test? I didn't feel like it. Why didn't you? Why didn't you sign up for the class? I didn't feel like it, why didn't you start saving money, I didn't feel like it. So I think it's very important that you know, where we remember, you know, that VR is part of our team. And that we need to do a good job of communicating with them staying in front of our team members. And, and making sure that, you know, we're enrolling them into our vision, just remembering that those people do have hard jobs. And some of them have caseload with maybe 100 people or more, and you're not the only one. So, you know, knowing that, you know, we're good communicators are going to share information, and good communicators are going to return information on time. And, and I also, you know, like, good, you know, like the customer, I see Justin as his as the, to give it a sports, you know, the customer is the quarterback, you know, and the customer really needs to say, Okay, this is, this is, these are the things that I you know, these are the things that I'm having some challenges with. And here are some solutions that, you know, I've come up with, you know, you know, TVI Voc Rehab teacher, mom, dad, special ed director, you know, what ideas do you have? So, it's so important that, you know, I love Justin, the, you know, the advocacy sandwich, right? So we start always start when we're meeting with an elected official or when we're writing a letter, you know, always starting with a positive greeting, Dear Mr. So and so it's, I hope this finds you well, I realize you're extremely busy. Dear Senator Casey. It's such a pleasure for you to thank you so much for meeting with us today. Always starting with a positive, then we're going to go to the meat of the matter. The reason I'm here today is I need to discuss, I need to bring to your attention some issues around Accessibility I need to bring some the eye, it's very this, this is extremely important to me to me and, and other people that I represent that that, you know, people are blind continue to have challenges with, you know, taking taking the college boards or whatever it is. So, you you say something, you give them the positive, the big piece of bread positive, then you give them the meat of the matter. And then I like to say,
then then here, here we go, this could determine how the conversation is going to go. Are you you know, are you a complainer or a blamer? Or are you going to provide some solutions?
So Dave?
Yes, sir. Oh,
I didn't I don't mean to cut you off. But I realized that Mr. Elsa Donis has entered the room he did all right. I do want to make sure that we give him the opportunity to speak with folks but thank you so much. Absolutely. Sitting in that moment there and and sharing more wisdom with us.
You got it's a privilege to be with you today. Hope everyone enjoys the convention. Stay well, everyone.
So we have with us today, the director of the Bureau of blindness and visual services. His name is rod Elsa Donis. And it's super wonderful to have Mr. Elsa Donis with us today. So now I'd love to offer you the floor, sir, to tell us a bit about what VR can do for us.
Well, thank you, sir. I think that the punishment is that you guys put me in the lineup after they've so I'm, you know, I'm gonna try to to do the best I can. So but, you know, they've has been a, you know, wonderful to me. So I think you guys have heard really good, good advice. I wish I was in person with you. But unfortunately, it's not possible because of the time that we have to navigate. So you know, why? Why can I tell you what, what can I do to for you, I think the simplest thing is exactly what it did for me. Because I am the director of the Bureau of blindness, because I was I went through the process myself. And, you know, part of what I'm gonna be interested in is in hearing from you specifically, as to what you think the art can do for you from your perspective. But the perspective I want to share with you is that I don't think the art can can make you successful. I think the art can help you to be successful. Because some of the attributes I think you will need and I think you you know you have, you need to have a certain sense of desire to succeed. You need to be ambitious. And you need to interact with VR, in such a way that you use it as a tool to really get to that enables you to get to the place where you can succeed. by that. I mean, you know, you shouldn't let your counselor decide for you what you can become. That wouldn't be success. That would be an invitation for failure to be honest with you. I think VR can help you one they can pay for things. I mean, as the first thing, but you need to tell them what to pay for. You know, a lot of times I think what I've seen over the years, both when I was in your position, and over the years when I've been sort of advising others, you're going through the educational system in the VR system is that too many times I think folks in your in your position, going through school, you wait till your counselor tells you what they're going to pay for, as opposed to you telling them you know, I have already decided what I want to become or at least if I haven't decided, I want you to work with me to decide where I want to become so that when when it comes to paying for things we know exactly what you're paying for. So paying for your services is in certain certain certain services is one of the ways that we are, I can help you succeed in terms of providing you with equipment, providing your services such as orientation and mobility instruction and and allowing you then, you know, to be able to exercise your interest in such a way that it gets you to the destination that you set for yourself. Um, So bottom line, you know, the it's a provocative question in the sense that
I'm,
you know, I, you know, some someone who's just starting out who's still looking for, you know, what can I become, am I capable of doing this I, I need to learn Braille, I need to learn assistive technology, I need to learn self advocacy, you know, what do you mean that I need to be able to, I need to want to want to succeed, it really comes into being able to network with those who've traveled the same path that you're attempting to travel. So knowing as many blind folks as possible, who have succeeded, being friends with folks that you can call upon as mentors to help you understand that which is possible, because your potential is your potential. You know, I, you know, they've used to say, it speaks about stretching your imagination, I speak about stretching the dimensions of your imagination. Um, because I think too many times we measure our imagination in such a way that the box is too small. And we wait on others to help us enlarge that. And I think your potential is that your potential is your potential. And VR should be assisting you to realizing that which you already capable of doing. So that would be the way I can navigate with providing you my perspective on what VR can do for you. Or, you know, the services, the equipment, and in, you know, the guidance and counseling from your, from your counselor. You know, one of the things that I've been talking to my staff about is the notion of informed, informed choice. Because, um, I, I don't want any of you to go into a meeting where your counselor where, you know, the the conversation is, Hey, there are a billion things that you can become, which one do you want to be? If you don't know what's possible, then we need to invest into transition services, such as Career Career exploit exploration, so that you then can be informed as to what is of interest to you. So that you can pursue it. So it's having the conversation with the people who are serving you. So they understand that their job is not to make you succeed, but is to help you to succeed. The important distinction is that you need to be to have the desire to succeed, you need to see yourself in the place that others don't see you. And you need to have the vision to to get to there. Let me close by telling you how I personally took my own advice. Before I knew I could advise myself. I wanted to be an attorney since I was six years old. I became aware of this when I was nine according to my dad, um, you know, I grew up in most of my elementary school, you know, through most of my elementary schooling, carrying a briefcase. And, you know, one time my dad had an issue, finding me a briefcase that I liked, and he asked me, Why is it that you like to carry a briefcase all the time, and I have two older brothers and they were fine with a book bag. And I said to him, you know, I am carrying it because it made it made me look like an attorney. Back then I was not fast forward. To You know, back in the early years, when I was in your position, you know, the New York State Commission for the blind, organized a trip to visit the National Center. And, you know, I remember sitting around the room all day and they were calling this guy Dr. And I was perplexed by the notion that they were calling a blind guy, a doctor. So spend the whole day bothered by the whole thing. And he's really a doctor. Well, I mean, again, you know, I was clueless as to the possibilities of one who is blind.
And I remember throughout the day around lunchtime, and I approached someone, I said, they've been calling this guy, Doctor, what is he a doctor in. And they say, Well, he's an attorney. And he has a Juris Doctor degree. So we call him doctor. And this was Dr. Mauer. And we talked about some 20 plus years ago. And that's when I finally realized, aha, I don't just have to want to look like an attorney, I can actually become one. And the rest is history. So you really need to have the desire, and let VR provide you with the resources that you will need to actually make it to the finish line to the finish line. So you know that that's really my perspective to you. And my job is to ensure that the services are provided to you efficiently, expeditiously and to your satisfaction. So that's a, you know, that's done. Indeed, if you have any questions, I'll be glad to have a conversation with you as to how you see me being able to help you succeed in my current role.
Thank you so much. Does anybody have any questions? Well, hearing none, from the audience, I do have one to float towards you. If if that's all right, this is Justin. And I'm curious, you know, we're all kind of waiting with bated breath to figure out when we're going to get off the waitlist to get into service status and everything if we're part of the folks that are that are on the waitlist, because the order of selection, can you give us any kind of update on how soon we'll be taking new cases openly again, and we'll be done with the the the waitlist process?
Excellent question, Justin, it's the this situation that we have is that the waitlist has been, shall we say partially open in the sense that every every now and then you have a few trunk of cases moving in and out of the cases, the problem that that we have is that I would like to see one, zero, wait less and we are working on that. The other situation you have is that because BVs is combined with bvrs and as a as a combined agency. And sometimes when the weightless is is is released, you always going to get a larger percentage from the other side than you get on the PVS side. So part of the discussion that's happening is to really see can we not have a waitlist. And you know, the executive director of VR is working on that aspect as we speak, to see, you know, when might we be able to not have a waitlist at all, but every now and then you'll see a couple of 1000 people being released. And if I crunched the data, you're gonna see aspects of it, you will see BVs customers as well being released. It's not I can tell you that it's not that the waitlist is not to the satisfaction of anyone on the executive team. We want it to we want to not have a waitlist. And the executive director is working on that.
Great. Well, thank you so much. Anybody else has any other questions?
If I don't get any questions, that means I'm doing my job really perfectly.
Right. So we had promised everyone a little bit of a coffee break leading up to 1:50pm. So we've still got five minutes of coffee break to do that. So perhaps everybody's already at their coffee machines. Thank you so much. Mr. Ross adonus, for coming to speak with us. And for now, everybody, let's transition into our coffee break and we'll be back online in five minutes.
Thanks for having me.
Great music. Gotta love the Federation music. So welcome back from our coffee break everybody. This is Justin saulsbury moderator speaking again. Mr. Jason Edward Polanski. Are you here with us? Awesome. So next person I'm going to be inviting to the microphone is someone that I got the chance to get to know while he was in training? And he definitely flourished and has flourished since then. So I'm, I'm very pleased to introduce you to the president of capital city chapter. Mr. Jason Edward Polanski.
Cool, thank you. Okay, Jason, I'm bringing like you. There you go. The podium or just
any table? Testing, testing. One, two. Cool. Yeah. So good afternoon, everyone. My name is Jason Polanski. As Justin said I'm president of the capital chapter of the NFLPA, which represents Harrisburg area. So, essentially, I'm going to talk about the structure discovery, training and microphone, you have to hold it really close. Okay, okay. It's good. It's good. Good. Okay. Yeah. So as some of you may know, the NFB has three structured discovery training centers, one in Louisiana, one in Colorado, the other is in Minnesota. So I attended the Louisiana Center for the Blind. And generally, kind of how these, what the centers are, is they're really based on adjustment, to blindness, and really teaching you how to live independently and building your confidence as a blind person. And, essentially, for those who don't know, you go away for about between six to nine months. Some, you know, it takes longer than others. And you live in an apartment, really on your own. You know, you may have a roommate I did, but you know, generally you're on your own, you're cooking your own food, you're getting your own groceries, you're, you know, attending classes every day from eight to five. So it's like, almost like having a job pretty much. And, you know, you're really honing in on your skills and learning to live independently. So you know, the classes that you have clewd Braille cane travel. So you get two hours of cane travel an hour Braille, hour of computers, and two hours of industry arts like workshop for confidence building, which is, at least that's how Louisiana is like, So, essentially, you know, you're, I mean, think about it, like when I was 18. So I went, I would recommend going between high school and college if you can, I mean, I realize like, everybody may not be ready at that time, but I think, you know, it will give you more confidence for college overall, if you can do it, then. Others go after college. So it just depends, but, you know, I personally found that it gave me a lot more confidence in colleges, because, you know, when I was 18, I really didn't know too much about, like cooking. I mean, I, you know, knew how to I obviously read Braille. So I'm totally blind. So I know I've been reading Braille on my life. I was decent with computers, travel. I mean, I could get around familiar environments. But, you know, I would say even travel alone, like having a two hours every day. You know, you really get to hone in on things like you know, how to get directions and unfamiliar environments, how to just like go out and explore when you're not too familiar with the area. You need crossing some, like busier intersections and what you may have done before. And then there's requirements that you have to meet to graduate. So they travel, you have three drop routes where, you know, they drop you off, they kind of they essentially, your, you know, get in a car, and they just drive you around and kind of spinning around in circles and your job is to make your way back to the center. And obviously, you don't do that your first day, okay, um, you know, but they, they don't, you know, have you do that until you're ready for it. But, you know, just know that you can, you know, find your way back.
And, I mean, I think, and I even did a couple joint drop routes with, and other students. So like, after I've done my three individual ones, got to do some joint ones. So that was like, pretty fun to do. You also do an out of town route. So I, because I was in Louisiana, I decided to go to Dallas, because it was I kind of wanted to go to a large city with a decent public transit, better than what you get in Monroe, and Shreveport. So in Louisiana program, you get to go to Monroe, and three for every so often to do bus travel, but I wanted to, you know, go somewhere that had, like some trains, and, you know, like a pretty more major metropolitan city. So Dallas was kind of the closest place to go. So that's what I did. Yeah, I loved it. And it definitely gave me more confidence, you know, as far as cooking, so it before we graduate, you have to do a meal for eight. And that's like kind of a form of meal. So like you're setting the table, and you're serving everyone. And then you do a meal for everybody at the center, which is generally about 40 people. And so it really just I mean, I really didn't know much about cooking, when I first started. So, you know, had I not gone to training before cards, I probably wouldn't have been that comfortable getting an A, you know, it can't an apartment, my senior year. During my first semester, my senior year, I studied off campus, I did a program in Nashville, where I was learning about the music industry, and I was living in an apartment with three other guys. And so, you know, had not gone to training beforehand, I wouldn't really just have had, you know, the skill or the confidence to like, go to an unfamiliar city for a semester for three months and live on my own. I mean, even though I did attend college, closer to home, like I did Career Center trips, one to Nashville, before I did my off campus program. So I learned about the program I did in Nashville off for the semester, when I was there with the Career Center, to Philly with the Career Center, when took a couple of trips to various places on my own. You know, so just being able to do those things, you know, with confidence and you know, relative ease, you know, I don't think I would have been able to do that, had I not, you know, gone gone to training. Also just you know, get being able to, you know, getting a job, right out of college having the confidence to do that. You know, a lot of times people, they might go to college, you might live in the dining hall, you might live in the dorm, in the dining hall and do Okay, get good grades, but then no, oftentimes people graduate from college who blind people graduate from college, and then like, they don't know, how to live, you know, how to cook, how to clean how to, you know, living in an apartment, which is almost necessary if you want to, you know, get a job and what have you oftentimes, so I wanted to have that on my on me beforehand, so that I just be ready would be ready to go. So it's really, I think I would highly recommend going to one of our looking into one of our structural discovery training centers, if you are able to do so it's it'll really change your life. I mean, so you'll like this learn a lot of things that you may not have really thought of before. And maybe the thing is, like, everybody who's at the center, you know, some people right out of college, some or you know, yet people you know, maybe in their 40s or 50s who are just getting used to blindness so you get to learn a lot of different things. And, yeah, various, you know, experiences and you're also learning to you integrate into the local community. So like when I was in Ruston and Louisiana, I, you know, was involved in some church things a little bit, I took a Louisiana Tech class. So it was a pretty definitely a really made an awesome experience and builds your confidence. And so something that I would mean, in the beginning, like, You're, you're probably like, Oh my gosh, I could never imagine doing a meal for 40. Like, I could never imagine, you know, going to unfamiliar city on my own. But when you put a lot of effort into it, you know, by the time you're getting ready to finish your, you know, you're more than likely be ready to do all those things. And then after training, it's important to continue their skills, right. So, I mean, even though like freshmen and sophomore year of college, I really didn't cook that much, because, you know, most freshmen and sophomores live in the dorm and eat in the dining hall. But like, whenever I would go home or whatever, for breaks, I would make sure to, you know, cook and, you know, practice those skills. And then, you know, I was definitely confident, you know, senior year,
you know, to go to Nashville and have have been in an apartment with all my friends instead of, you know, being in a dorm. And then now I've, you know, graduated from college and having an apartment. So yeah, that, does anybody kind of have questions about our training centers? You know, what is anybody kind of thinking about maybe going to a training center? You know, what do you think? Yeah. I kind of let you guys take it from here.
Um, yes, I
have a question. And who is this?
This is Anastasia strock. Winner? Yes. I'm curious if there are any out of pocket expenses that are associated with the training program?
Yeah, so virg rehab, covers, most of like, the tuition and everything. So you do get like in Louisiana, you get $210 every month, that's kind of like, you're running your own money. So you can use it for groceries, you can use it like so Louisiana, for example, we went got to go to Mardi Gras. In New Orleans, we got to go rock climbing in Arkansas. So you get to do some. If you go like during National Convention, you get to go to national convention, Louisiana and a three state convention. So it's, um, mean, you get a lot of other experiences, as well. I think Colorado, he gets to go skiing quite a bit. So but you know, there's not really a lot. I mean, if you're, you get your $200 a month, you know, kind of your maintenance check. And then from them, and then, you know, if you have like SSI or whatever, so there's not really a lot of out of pocket expenses. Okay, thank
you.
Yeah.
So, Jason, thank you very much for sharing your story with us. We really appreciate it. And now we're going to transition to another speaker, who's also here to share a bit of their story with us. Some of you may have heard this man speak before. I don't want to preempt the way he's gonna tell his story by telling it for him. But Mr. Ren Wang, I see you're on the call here with us. And I see that you're unmuted it appears. So if you are ready, I'd love for you to take away and tell us your story.
Okay. Thank you. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay, great. Well, challenge every day The challenge is always knew. And I, when I was in a Toastmaster learn how to give a speech, and never get a chance to learn how to give broadcasting facing a screen. And this is the first challenge. And of course, in my work, I gave some presentation that I tried to see about my co workers asked me, since you cannot see anybody doesn't make any difference. So and I said, Sure, I can hear you guys. But now I'm sitting in my room here. And I just said, talking assuming that everybody's looking, everybody's listening. And so that's a new challenge. So, in my life, my challenges starts since birth, because I lost my side when I was about seven months old. And at that time, they find out when I was born that they find that I had a retinal blastoma that can have cancer of the retina. And then they took out my Bull's eyes. And I've been put into the deep darkness since then, and never see the light in my life. And so probably most of you have, maybe you have experienced and as some of them, you are lucky enough that you have seen the light before or still have some sight, but color and light to me just like God. And people told me, there it is. And I never seen it. So I'm right now, for a short period of time, it's hard to share a lot of my adventures, and which, but I'm going to just wanted to highlight a couple of things that could be beneficial to young students when you're still in the school. And this is the hope play could be helpful to you. And the first thing in my life in early age, I still can recall back all the way to about four to three years old, some people said about probably because my visual impairments, and I focused on recalling those events all the time, but and that's probably true. And also, there's other reasons, I often recall those things, because those things have truly affected me a lot. The first thing is how I grow my confidence, I lost my side and became a blind and my parents have never had experience with a blind like most other parents do. And they just really truly been put into deep sad when when I was as a first boy became a book blind soon after we've been born and entitled to talk on ice. Um, during that time, they have been searching a lot of information how to deal with the blind. And I was born in China at that time. In China, there's no education for the blind and higher than eighth grade. And there was no other career opportunity after that, other than to be a mature, that's the best, the best opportunity they could have no choice. But in my life, when I was early age, even before I was 10 years old. My grandfather gave me lots of interest around segments of my interest into by telling me his experience, because he is a businessman, he was working in different bank before and he sir, served in in Europe, in Japan and many different countries before so he had a lots of experience in IRL. But during the Cultural Revolution during the communist persecution times that our family was destroyed, so he had nothing to do. So that put him in concentrating on talking to me as his entertainment. And that benefits me and brought me into a very high level, adult education I doubt level
training, way of talking. And also, whenever my family my home has somebody, some come some visitors from my parents for my grandparents. They like talk to me, and I like to talk to them. This I like to share what I heard. And of course, no matter what level those visitors are, when they see a person young kids with visual impairments, their curiosity, always bring them to talk to me, no matter what, how shy or soft, how active they are, what personality it is. That gave me a very great opportunity to open my communication to society to the adult world. An early age that was about I'm talking about five, six years old in to even till today I feel I've truly benefited from that age from that kind of communication training. Because without that training, I wouldn't be confident enough to walk out myself to exploring the new area that was not belong to that's not supposed to belong to me at that time. And then later, another adventure that I had was probably you, most people, you have facing a challenge, if you are working, walking on the street, where you had never been before, or you do not know what's in front of you. That's so my father, find out a way to give me a to overcome that. And also a blind person usually have a lower balancing skills. So in my early age, he took me to the football field, he put me on his bicycle said, Go ahead, try to ride a bicycle around me. At the beginning, I was a little anxious to do that. But I was a little afraid of running to things running to the football football gate there. But he said, Go ahead, do it. ride a bicycle route that gave you wait, you didn't you just about trying to balance yourself. That gave me a great help. After that, after several weeks, I was able to riding bicycle around around him, he just sit down and he said that just go around me and go a little bit larger circle, and just go from this side to the other side of the football fields. And you can just ride around. Nobody, don't be afraid. So that training, not just only gave me a physical balance training, but also gave me a psychological confidence that I could I do not have to be afraid of anything in front of me. And later, I will tell you, after I graduated from this school, went out walking in the office walk into the office, people were amazed that I have such a strong mobility and never use a cane. Because my I in office I'm outside of course I do. Because of that one's demonstrating. I was blind and the other people would be careful that I just said, but inside the office, everybody know me. And I don't have to use a cane, just like them. very normal, behave like normal walk like normal from this floor to the other floor to the cafeteria to the bathroom to the cube and everywhere to the meeting room. I don't have to do it. I don't have to use a cane and everybody just loved that. Hey, are you surely blind? I said yeah, my Bullseye is artificial, I could equip the
camera to take a picture of you in my eyes. So that gave
people a also a comfort less. Because make people feel like you just you have nothing different from them. So from those experience, I truly realized that once when you're in an early age, and I don't know how many audience right now they're in, still in the school. But when you are in the school, like what Jason just mentioned about those training programs, those are very good things and I definitely recommend to actively participating in it. And also trying to actively join conversation join communication with the older people, with the community with your family members. So with your friends and your families, friends, and bring information and gathering information trying to learn how to communicate and say I mean the communication not just only verbal communication, but also facial communication as well, even though you cannot see them, but they can see you. Pay attention to the official communication and also tell people tell your family Remember, correct your wrong facial expression. If you have, even till today, my wife also tells me sometimes don't look this way, people feel nasty, kind of frustrated, you feel that she often if I forgot, I sent him a I made a mistake. But reminding your family members constantly correct your official communication, those behavior will be strong, greatly benefit, believe me in the future when you are, walk into the office when you are getting into the internet, get into society. And also another thing I wanted to share with you, in the school, be creative and be contributive. Because the only value a blind person could have in this society is the amount of contribution you can give to this society, not how much you can get. So if you think you need a help, say for example, you're in the class. Most the time, you may need a help. However, how much help Can you give to the class, when you stay with a sighted students? I one day I remember when I was in University of Pittsburgh, there was an A, I taught the computer architecture course, the teacher trying to use their board, drawing a graphic on a board and dry drawing, okay, and then he says, okay, from this point to this point, and then go to the other point and go to the Service Desk. And then you can see this graphic and this way, that way. And then you can see, I tell and then I say excuse me teacher, where to where and then the all the class was laughing. And then they were just say that default totally for that there's a blind person, there's a visually impaired person there. So the teacher paused a little bit. And then he said, Let me try again. And he said, Okay, let's say from a point A, leading to a point E and then going back to point D, and Nicole, I'm going to circle from B to C like that, when you say that, I was I immediately formed a clear picture in my mind. And then also and after the class, I told my teacher I say I really appreciate your, your, your teaching this way. You give me a very, very graphical description, descriptive
knowledge it so I can imagine, though things very, very well. So he said, you really give me a great challenge. And that that helps me to make stronger logical thinking that way. Yeah, that's something that when you need it, don't be hesitant to say it. However, one day, the same teacher was pointing out there and writing the code. And they said, what this code, asking it and then he just pulling down to go down down the go down to a program logic. And then he stopped there. Hmm. Then what else we're going to do. But in my mind, I follow up his talk, and I had to catch up every word. He said, I caught up everything. And so I realized that one step he missed it. So as I just raised hands, I said, Excuse me, I think you probably missed on the two step forwards. Remember, you probably should do this way. Do you think is Oh yes, yes. Right. And then so all the classroom they were all laughing again. This is the contribution I can give to the class. And then I demand it for what I needed. And I gave what I have. And then 20 years later, when I walk into a new company, when I work or walk into the new company, I got a new job. A girl came over here to talk to me. Do you remember me? I was in your class before where the classmates in inpit. I said oh really And she told me remember that story. You told you told us? Dr. So and So you'd get that you correct a mistake. And then you had, we were laughing the week at home we were in, we went home, I told my parents, they were sure. They was really shocked. And he said, he said, Oh, how could a blind person keep so much information in the mind? And how can he keep track of those things on the board. But, and then he She also told my boss that story. So you can imagine how palatable my boss would be how happy he would be for hiring me. That's the story that basically, I am many other story like similar to that. During the school year. We communicate each other. And many of them later, they realized they had no fear of hiring a person with a disability, even for me. Later, when I became a manager when I started interviewing the people. Of course, I didn't get a chance to interview people with a disability. But for those who had a language, difference, I considered that linguistic disability. But those people I also told them the story I said, Be confident, don't be afraid. Keep doing with and be creative, as long as you because the way that you live in your life. 20 years from now, everything the world will be different. Today, we're still using computer we don't know what 20 years from now, what type of what model of communication we're going to have. But be creative, always to find out where's where's your place to go. And where you can have your, your develop your own yourself and also where you can contribute yourself. That's the critical part in order to be deeply involved in the society, in the same time, as a student today, when you are in the school, remember, your schoolmates, those sided people in the future could be CEO of the Fortune 500 company, could be a senator, could be a house representative, or even could be a president of United States. So your behavior at fat, the life of many other peoples
with visual impairments with disabilities in the future, because of the first impression, always stay static in their mind, when they see whether when they see the first blind person, they probably in their life will be the first one or maybe the last one. So when you are as a student, you're not just only learning but also you're giving you're not just only giving to your group, giving to the for Europe to the people around you, but also giving the people in the future. So how you want to do it, keep in mind, every time every day, every behavior where when you wear your clothes, when you talk the way you talk the way you move your hand gesture, anything, just keep thinking, am I doing right way as the other side of people do? Okay, the time is too short. And tomorrow, we're going to have another 45 minutes, I have a chance to talk about my personal stories. And if you're interested, you can join it tomorrow afternoon this time. And hopefully, we're looking forward to your success and bright future. Thank you.
Well, thank you very much. We really appreciate having you today, Mr. Wang. And we're looking forward to having you tomorrow. I'm definitely looking forward to that 45 minute, Bull version of your story. So that's the movie trailer. Well, we just got that was the movie trailer. So thank you, I appreciate that. And now, for the next 10 minutes, I'm going to share a little bit about getting involved with the National Association of blind students. Right. So we heard about some of these things already. Actually, I think somehow Jennifer Kennedy learned how to hack into my computer and she'll read half my report. So that's great. Um, so so this is this is going to be good. So um, We have a lot of stuff going on in the world today, with COVID-19. It's everywhere, you can't go anywhere without thinking about it. It's just part of our lives right now. And certainly within the Federation, we've had to do a lot to respond to COVID-19. Within the student realm, we've had a lot to deal with as well. And so for us in the National Association of blind students front and center in our work, it's not the same as it's been for all these years now, I was first elected to the National Association of blind students board in 2012. And with that comes the opportunity to go to state conventions and represent all the time. I A lot of my speeches, I could pretty pretty well say most of it would be pretty much the same at from year to year. But this year, it's just different. Because what we're doing is so different because of COVID. It's still the same in the sense that we're trying to help blind students succeed. And we're doing everything we can to raise the expectations of blind people and play a vital role in the National Federation of the Blind. But what we need to do to carry out that goal is now different. And so a lot of our programming now has again, been dealing with COVID-19. A lot of us no classes and high stakes testing have moved online. If you wanted to take an LSAT or something like that now that's online, and a lot of things have changed in our accommodations have changed, how do we take tests and get our assignments and all those things? And because all of those things have been changing? We already had trouble with accessibility beforehand, like Jennifer Kennedy was telling us, we've been trying so hard to get some voluntary accessibility guidelines for Accessible Instructional Materials in higher education. Why is that so hard? The idea is the law tells them well, you have to make things accessible, but it doesn't ever tell the universities what that means. So then we show up and they realize things aren't accessible, and then they have problems and they've got to try to fix them. And we don't really want to end up suing our universities, we want to get our degrees and get on with our lives. But you know, unfortunately, it doesn't always give us that that happy ending or happy path to the ending that we want. So we as students know that accessibility barriers come up. And to try to help give people the opportunity to learn about how to work on some of these things. We have gone and developed some FAQ documents that go through and basically one page formats for each of the major course delivery systems and software platforms like Canvas, we've gone and made these one page FAQ documents to help give people some information about what's going on. And quite frankly, in our society right now. It's really trendy, people want to say, Oh, we have all these resources, resources, resources, as if resources are the primary thing that anybody can do and put up and create. And it we're doing it for sure, because it is useful. But you know, that's the trend right now. But we realize that when a blind student is having an accessibility barrier, and maybe they've got people that are bearing down on them and telling them don't complain about discrimination, or whatever it is, that's happening. We know that in those scenarios, one of the biggest barriers is feeling alone. Because if you feel alone in your struggle, there's not enough FAQ documents out there that are going to fix that. There's not enough books and then websites and encyclopedias and everything else. If you feel alone, what you need is another human being that understands. And that's one thing that we know that we as students can provide to each other
in a way that nobody else really does. And certainly there are people who are no longer students, maybe recent students, like for example, NFB of Pennsylvania president Lynn heights not too long ago, went and got her master's degree, you know, people who aren't students anymore, but who do relate to the struggle. But you know, we've got to get together as students and make sure that we have each other's back and make sure that we never feel alone in our local chapters in our relationships with other blind people. Those can carry us a long way. Because those are the beginning. And then once you don't feel alone anymore, then you can start looking for a solution. So definitely don't underestimate that value of sticking together with other blind people. And we inapt want to make sure that we're doing that we also want to make sure that people are feeling encouraged to connect with other blind people in their local areas and near their schools. So that's where state conventions and local chapter meetings can make a huge difference.
We have a committee structure in abs. We have a fundraising committee where we've been doing fantasy football fundraisers. Certainly that's been a little funky now, because people may have folks on their fantasy football team that don't get to play because maybe they're benched for COVID or something else is going on. Right? The Football season has been quite crazy. Maybe you have lots of Pittsburgh Steelers. So players on your fantasy football team. So anyway, we are doing what we can to raise money and make sure that it's fun. And we give something to tease each other about maybe take away the stress that's coming from COVID. We also have the legislative and self advocacy committee. And in that committee, we've been doing a lot to collect student stories with accessibility. And I'm going to go a little more into that in a second. Jennifer definitely gave us some foreshadowing into it. So you know, we've also been building those FAQ documents. That's where they're coming from the legislative and self advocacy committee. We've been mobilizing students against bad legislation, things like the safe to Work Act, which would have basically given companies permission to not follow the ADA for five years, if they thought it had anything to do with Coronavirus. Apparently if you can argue that wheelchair ramps would make you at a greater risk for Coronavirus then you don't need to put a wheelchair ramp or if you know putting Braille on your building more at risk for Coronavirus. You don't need to put Braille on the building. All kinds of things like that would have been crazy. And so we had to rise up and fight and say no, we're not going to allow that to happen. And it hasn't happened yet. And we want to make sure that it doesn't. We have been building cosponsor support also for some other legislation that is friendly to us things like the access technology affordability act. Now we as students often have trouble affording the technology that we need to go to school. And this would basically give us a tax credit, a refundable tax credit that we could get if we if we need to go out and buy something that's going to help us in school some kind of access technology. Now we were attempting to get that into that last COVID-19 stimulus package that never actually happened. But we were building lots of support. And either way, maybe there's a little time in this lame duck session where we could actually get get the access technology affordability act through either way, we'll see. We've also got an outreach committee that does a lot of those things that you might expect from a committee that's called an outreach committee. It works on things like membership calls and podcasts and other things like that. doing our social media and everything. Also a very important committee very simple in its concept. So we've been planning a public speaking seminar, it's going to happen in January, the second weekend in JAMA in January. And this will be we're calling it the NABS at large seminar. But basically, it's a National Student seminar, and we're going to work on our public speaking skills, and it will be done via zoom. So that'll also give us some opportunity to get better at how to do our public speaking over zoom. But it will also give us good wisdom, knowledge, skills, and practical experience that will help us to be better public speakers, we all know that helps us in life, with everything, every part of life, it's good to be able to be a good public speaker, we know that of course, Washington seminar is going to be virtual, there will be some virtual programming that we're going to do for it. We always have student programming and a face to face Washington seminar. So we'll make sure that we're there in this virtual environment. Now last, I want to go to this newest piece that's coming out with these accessibility stories for a long time, we would collect them in writing, and that's good. But somehow for some students, you know, they're really brave keyboard warriors on Facebook and things like that. And they'll tell their stories, and they'll rants and everything else. But when you tell them to go in and write a separate story that we can use for something formal, the excitement just doesn't seem to come there. But what we, you know, we've gotten a lot of stories nonetheless. But what we're thinking is, maybe we can tap into some people's creativity and excitement. And this past year at the National Convention, we had a competition where people were telling their one minute stories of their first national convention experience. We're gonna do something just like that. And it's going to be happening over basically the next month. You're going to hear about it very soon, and the deadline is going to be December 20. For submissions. What we're going to be doing is we're going to have something called the student access moments. This will be our competition, you're going to take 60 seconds And we'd love it if you'd put up a virtual background. Or if you want to take your camera and go physically to some cool place on your campus, every campus has some kind of place that's really memorable to all the alumni some kind of bell tower or fountain or something that's like the central the centerpiece of campus. I know where it would be at East Carolina, I know where it would be at Louisiana Tech, I know where it would be at UW Madison, I know where it would be at UConn, some of the schools I've attended. So certainly take a virtual background, you know, the schools are putting them out all over the place. Go ahead and use that zoom feature, make yourself a virtual background, then get right in front of your computer camera and start your rant, tell us tell us what happened to you about how you had an accessibility barrier and who said what and how you're gonna overcome it, tell us what's going on, make it exciting and fun, we're gonna have a competition. And then some of the best stories are going to be awarded prizes. So it's also good if you want to tell stories of how you overcame things and things were positive, those are good as well have a variety, we're looking to have video stories for our competition, we're going to be putting them up on social media. So you can go to the hashtag student access moments, and you can watch other people's and you can get excited about it. This will raise everyone's consciousness about all the accessibility barriers that we face. And it will give us some really great video material that we may choose to use in some public education campaigns as well. And a lot of times, people might feel a pressure when something like this to talk about the legislation. We're not asking you to do that. We already have tons of people that know how to talk about the legislation, that's not a concern, we always need more of them to write. But what we really need is more content of students telling students stories, we just want to be able to prove that this is still an issue, it didn't go away, technology didn't just magically get better. So we want students coming and telling their stories. And again, student access moments. 60 seconds is going to be a virtual competition, we're going to be sending out those emails about it very soon. And your deadline for submission will be December 20. So that is my report with the National Association of blind students. And now, I'd like to call upon the next presenter, who will be the chair of our scholarship committee. And that is Mr. Jim antonacci. to come here and introduce us to our scholarship winners.
Okay, thank you, Justin. And took me a second here to unmute. It's good to be with all of you, at least virtually here. Just to give you a little background, I think this is just I believe this is state convention, Pennsylvania State convention number 30. For me, I think my first one was in Erie in 1991. So it's I really miss being together with people. But unfortunately, I'm in the in one of those. Those tough target age brackets for COVID. So I my feeling was is that it was not not a great idea for me to be out there traveling and in a in a big in a group like this right now. So hopefully next year, we'll be able to be together with all you folks and we'll see you all again there next year. One of the things that I've I did as a when I worked was I was a blindness counselor. I worked for the for blindness visual services here in Pennsylvania. And one of the things I used to do with with the people that I had was I used to pull out some cash and I'd say, and I'd let them feel it I'd say tell you Do you know what that is? And I'll tell you something in a blind people are pretty sharp because I didn't come across one of them that didn't know what it was. Now, some of them you know, we're unable to identify the denomination but they all knew that you know what it was and they'd say, cash or money, you know, something like that. And I'd say well Yeah, but it's a whole lot more than that. I used to say that it what what that is, is the great equalizer. And the more of it you have, the more equal you become. And basically, I went on and said, you know, if you ever noticed that if you're standing at a counter, and you had no, I used to say a 20, that they'll tell you how long I've been. I've been retired. So, but nowadays, I say, if you have a 50 in your hand, and you're waving it around, have you ever noticed that it doesn't make any difference? Whether you're male or female, whether you're young or old, black or white, blind or sighted? You ever noticed what the clerk says? Yes, sir. What can I do for you, sir? How can I help you, sir? It's that, that, you know, paper thing that you're waving around that gets you instant, instant equality, instant notoriety. And I said, Now, there's a bunch of ways of getting money, cash, you know, one of the ways is stealing it. But of course, the one of the problems with being blind is that you can't run fast enough to, to dodge the police. So you're, the other way of doing it is to earn it. And one of the ways that blind people can earn it is through better educations. So therefore, I've been telling people that, you know, it's best to be able to get out there and, and earn your way. And, in a sense, you know, if you if you get a decent education, of course, that'll help you get a decent job. And with a decent job comes decent pay. And with decent pay comes the ability to be inserted into the, into the community, as a real person, who, who knows what they're doing and can can be out there
with the rest of society, and just going on and doing your thing. So now, in order to help, some of our people do that, and be for a long time, many years ago, had put together a scholarship organization. And here in Pennsylvania, unfortunately, we didn't have state scholarships when I became president. But when I became when I started in the national scholarship program, as a on that committee back in 2001, that was my first first year in the national scholarship program, I realized that we needed, we needed to start a scholarship program here in Pennsylvania, I remember what, whether we actually started it in 2001, or 2002. I'd have to go back to my records and look it up. But I will tell you that one of the first people to to get an NFP state scholarship is now currently on the board of directors and the National Federation of the Blind in Pennsylvania. That, by the way, is Harriet go. And so we seem as though we've been able to keep a bunch of those who have been around scholarship winners. This year, I was very happy to be the chair of the scholarship committee. And we had a number of good applicants. But unfortunately, we could only we had we had to boil them down to two people. And let's see. I guess if we take them alphabetically, one of the first the one of our our two scholarship choices for this year was Anastasia struck. And Anastasia. I hope I I said that correctly.
Yes, you did.
Wonderful. Okay. I'm Stacy is is a student at Clarion University. And I By the way, I did have the as a State President way back when I had the opportunity to go out to the to the area. There were Clarion is and meet a couple a few blind youngsters, one of which
was was
Lindsey Palumbo and her brother Lindsay has, in fact, eventually became a national scholarship winner. And she so it was it was great having an stasia as a scholarship state scholarship winner this year since she went to the she's going to the same university scientists stasia Why don't you tell the the student division a little bit about yourself as to what you're doing there at Clarion? You know, a little bit of background about yourself good. Okay,
um, can anybody can everybody hear me? Okay?
I know we can on zoom. So I assume?
Okay. Um,
okay, well,
I am 27, I decided to go back to school. When I was 25, I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to do. After high school, I had a hard time finding my own path with my blindness. And I finally decided that, hey, I'm going to go back to school. So I decided on Clarion because I really liked their disability department. So I decided to go for human services and psychology. And once I get my undergrad from Clarion, I would like to either go on to get my graduate degree in counseling, or, you know, take the big step and just go ahead and get my doctorate in psychology. So, it's definitely been a journey. The first year was very rough, because I'd been out of school for about seven years, six or seven years at that point, but I can honestly say that I am very happy that I decided to go back to school, and it is one of the best decisions I have personally ever made.
Okay.
Anastasia, I'm glad to hear that. And one of the things that you will find out this weekend at the convention is is that the National Federation of the Blind is very different from a lot of those organizations, for blind people, and that we ourselves are the decision makers in what we do. And you're obviously you've begun that already by making the decision to go back to school and, and further the education. And hopefully, we wish you the best. And what we hope is that you stick with us because we can do an awful lot for blind people, especially when they're students. But again, even afterwards, we can help open those doors and keep things going as far as what you need. I know that I worked all my life as a blind person, but found out that once you have to start using that cane or start moving around, or this or that or whatever, that things become a lot different. And a lot of times people in a people will make decisions based on what they believe the blind people can and can't do, rather than what we know blind people can and can't do. And sometimes we need to sort of wake them up a little bit and that's where our advocacy and things like that that we do will really come in important. Our other scholarship winner this year. I've known for many years In fact, I think I think I first met her when she was in elementary school. So in fact I'm positive that we first met her in elementary school. We have been around NFB was around for a number of years of her life. So, you know, she, I know was was able to, to see blind people who actually became became not just not just the hapless helped This type, but the those that really got out there and did their thing and were able to do that. So Rebecca Weber, we who everybody knows is Becca, Becca, tell tell this the group, something a little bit a little bit about yourself and good.
Hello. So I'm back. I am 23 Okay, can you hear me now?
Yeah, we could hear you before a little, you're a little soft, but get a little closer and I think we'd be fine, Becca.
Okay. All right. So
that's great. Good.
Okay. So I am currently at Kutztown University, and the vision program to become a teacher of blind students. And I graduate in the spring of 2021. So when I graduated high school, before I graduated, I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do with, you know, my life after high school. And in the summer of 2015, I went to a program that some of you may know, it's called Summer Academy. It's at Penn State. And basically, that program teaches students how to transition from high school to college. And one program that I really enjoyed one class was the vision, we have therapy class. And I really enjoyed that. And I first I wanted to go for that. But I didn't want to go to college and get like a random degree. So I decided to go to Kutztown to go into the vision program. And I eventually would like to get my vision, like we have teaching certification. But yeah, I'm like really excited to start and you know, excited to get out in the field, I guess. Yeah.
Okay. Well, Rebecca, it's good that you're with us. Becca has been, has been involved with the Keystone chapter in the Philadelphia area since she lives in suburban, suburban Philadelphia. So Becca, it's great to have you with us there. And hopefully we can, we can get you more and more involved, I'll tell you that the students really do terrific and Washington seminar I, I really didn't realize much about the Federation until they got me to start going to Washington seminar. And then when I start started getting into pushing for legislation that blind people needed, I thought, you know, this is what it's really all about, is getting out there. And, and, you know, letting these these lawmakers know exactly what it is we need. And I figured out that they don't have a clue. They really don't know, they think that, you know, I really think that they still see us as, as the people with the dark sunglasses, holding the cup in our hands, you know, looking looking for, for donations, and that's not what we're about. What we're about, as we all know, is that we're capable. And those of us who who get out there and and learn the skills we're you know, we we are out there becoming capable and able to handle things on our own and one is just given the opportunity. And if people are told that you know, we can't just be brushed aside that we are for real and we can get out there. I can tell you that I I'm one of these people who in fact I went to college as a blind person and worked all my life as a blind person. I'm retired now and it's it's great knowing that I I've successfully raised the family you know bought the house I always joke about it. I said I bought the house I bought the car for the family. You know I bought bought the bought the kids wedding and now we're buying the grandkids. So you know those the you know, the family has never known has never thought that blindness was ever some sort of a pitiable and disabilities That, you know that that needs help. All they knew is that their, their father, their grandfather was, you know was was the person who was always there for them. So, hopefully, you know, all you guys will be there for your families. And we know when I'm long gone, I hope you remember that, you know, we gave, we helped to give you the opportunity to be where we were. Justin, I think I've have I done as much as I need to, and I hopefully I haven't gone overboard. As far as time. If you need me to fill a little bit more I can do that.
Well, you're just fine. With everything you did, you know, now the next. And basically the only remaining item on the agenda is the student division business meeting. And so, you know, we're really glad to be able to hear a little bit from our students. And, you know, I'm, I'm curious about this vision program, you know, I'm wondering if they have programs that teach people how to see or something, you know, but we'll, we'll have time to interview our scholarship winners more, I'm sure.
That's, that's true. And, and yeah, but Becca, that's one of the things Becca when it comes to two master's degrees, I think, down there, Louisiana, with the Down Down at the university, we actually have a master's program in teachers of blind students. And I believe that there's Justin, if I remember correctly, there's, there's there's always a bunch of scholarship money available down there as well. So hopefully, when hopefully, when Becca has done this year, she will apply for, for inclusion into that program as well. So folks, I'm going to sit back and I'll just just be a listener, if anybody needs any help with any of this, I'll be happy to do so. Back to you, Justin.
Thank you, sir.
So, thank you, everybody, for being here. super glad to have everyone who's here. And I noticed from our participants panel that we still have a lot of folks with us. So now we basically are going to do a relatively simple business meeting, I'd like to call us to order at 2:59pm. And, you know, in terms, we had talked a little bit about a Secretary's report, which usually is just simply a reflection of, of where the divisions been over the past years. And I'd like to do this collaboratively and, and allow us to quite simply, you know, throw in our, our, our know our thoughts on what we've seen over the past year for this division, because then the next step is going to be figuring out what we're going to do in the coming year.
All right, I'm gonna take the silence for what it is. So now we're going to talk about what we want to do with the coming here. But it appears before we even do that. I did put on this agenda, a collection of dues. Logistically, we're not really in a position to do much dues collecting. I've consulted with our affiliate president Linn heights. And we are not, we're going to have to talk about dues at a later time. And pretty much take people on an honor system about being,
you know,
legitimate members as we move forward with a meeting. So I think if we look at setting some goals for the next 12 months, I want to ask people to take a moment to talk about what it is that that you think you want to see our student division doing in the next 12 months, but until our next state convention. Do we need to dim the lights that people are willing to stand up and speak? Here's somebody coming to the mic.
Yeah, we have a question. Hold on. All right.
I think that we should probably like get better with like practicing the legislation from When we do the state convention next year, like we could, like, get better at practicing, like, what the board meetings would be like, because I know like, last year at the student meeting, they like they said, like, they were gonna, like practice doing a resolution with the students. And then they're like, oh, we're not doing a real resolution, and it was like, really confusing last year. So that's my comment. Okay, so
learning about how to do resolutions,
or like, what I mean is like, what I mean is like, learning how to do that, and practicing what it would be like to, like, do the, like speaking with the Congressman, because last year, at the student meeting, we tried to do some of that and like, the discussions were a little bit confusing. Okay,
practicing legislative meetings.
Yeah, I think the student division should get better at practicing legislation.
Okay. Is that coming from?
Uh, Angelina from Pittsburgh?
All right, cool. I thought that I thought it might be you. Great. Who else has things that they want to request that we as a student division work on in the next 12 months?
What are some other voids and things that are missing in the lives of blind students? Some unmet needs of blind students in Pennsylvania? The only people who should be quiet are people that have everything that they want and need right now.
Yeah, Becca, um, what? We're going over what Angelina, I believe said is like practicing, like, the different legislation. Like what what we're going to the Congress, people with, like, what? pieces of legislation? I guess we're focusing on. Okay.
Thank you. Anybody else?
Anybody else that wants to talk about goal setting?
Jason plans? He has a question, please stand by.
Yeah.
They can keep this one at that table, if they insist on having to two separate meetings of the students.
Yeah, I think we need better outreach. I mean, over the past year, we really didn't do hardly anything to be honest. So I think we need to change that and COVID affected everything and but like even if we have nice and virtual seminars there were maybe we Taksim with like, another state or no other NABS divisions, etc. I think we need, you know, I mean, outreach to more students, but then also just, you know, maybe, you know, maybe have like monthly zoom calls about, you know, similar to what NAB is doing, but maybe more specific to pa like about either professional readiness or college tips. Like, I know that there's a lot of high school students. So I mean, I'd be happy to, you know, chime in on some of those somebody who's, you know, gone through college and everything, or whatever, you know, people were interested in. I mean, we have we need to be doing more than what we have been. Yeah. And are there anything that we can do kind of like Advocacy wise to make sure that people who don't have what they need, you know, students who don't have what they need can get what they need, be it you know, working with virg rehab or tech wise or just confidence boost wise, just, you know, just like supporting each other and whatever, you know, whatever that we want that to look like.
Thank you. Anybody else?
Folks, this assignment here? Well, I hope I'm not too involved in Pennsylvania student meetings, but maybe I'll get into that more. You know, I've been involved in Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania affiliate for many years, but I haven't done many things with division. But maybe there's something we can do, that I can get involved with in some way and in the student area. And, yeah, I think maybe where I come in maybe to help something with something as I do podcasting. So maybe if anyone has ideas for, you know, students have ideas for something that they want to put together to get people made aware of. I can assist in that. And anyway, something along those lines. So yeah, that's my I take.
Thank you.
Anybody else?
Kennedy. Sorry,
who's that?
Kennedy.
Hey, Jennifer, good.
Then, Jay,
excuse me, Justin gave a really comprehensive look at
what
types of activities the national division is working towards. And I would love to hear from the Pennsylvania group that there's an initiative that our national group is doing, that they're excited about, and they want to participate in, you know, the work, we we work better as a group. And with that structure, it sounds like there's an awful lot of representation here that the rest of the country needs to hear about from Pennsylvania students.
That's an awesome point.
So
certainly, I did talk about a lot of different things that we're doing on the national scene. Did any of those sound appealing to people here in Pennsylvania?
antonacci. Yes, Justin, I'd like to say as the as the past president of NFP of Pennsylvania and let you and since I know that you and I have spoken many times, and Jennifer and I know each other from God, Jennifer, if I remember correctly, was 2001 your first national convention?
Yes, sir. But don't give our story away. It's part of my banquet speech.
You mean going to the Phillies game? Yes. Okay. All right. see
exactly where we're going.
All right. Good. I'll, it'll be interesting to hear this. But anyway. First of all, I need people need to know that here in Pennsylvania. And Lynn has told me that she's continuing what I be I began is that we have always stood behind our student division. We've helped the student division as much as we can we've, we've always made it possible for them to go to Washington seminar we used to pay there. In fact, now of course, Washington seminar coming up is going to be virtual, but in the past. We have also we have always paid their way to Washington seminar and paid for rooms at Washington seminar we've always made sure of course, we've always wanted them to participate in the National Student seminar that occurs at Washington seminar. We have always helped them get to national convention. So for all you students who have who think how much it I'll tell you I was at the National Convention in New Orleans in 1997. That was the last time we were there. And I surely hope that between the the vaccines and the, and the medications that are out there that a lot of this is going to be over by July because I surely would love to go back to to Louisiana this July. And I'd like to see all you folks there with me. Those are things that we can do. But at the same time, I've always, and I've, unfortunately, I guess I was lucky. or fortunately for me, I was lucky, because the person who actually started the Pennsylvania association of blind students paths was a fella by the name of Karis, Apollo, you guys, some of you guys may know him. And he was always a go getter as far as getting, keep keeping the division going, and this and that. And what we need are some folks who are going to help do the same thing I love to hear Jason, when he said, Oh, we should get together more and, and, you know, keep keeping in contact with each other and plan things. I think that's the kind of thing we need here in Pennsylvania, we need the students to come together and be together more often. And then try to find out who else is out there, contacting other blind students. And I know we have a tons of, of information about blind students that we can go out and try to pull them in. And I think if they find if they realize that we have a lot of great resources here, that I think that they'll stick with us, and they'll I know that the the affiliate will, will back the student division. And, of course, it will also help if the student division, you know, met us halfway. And I think that that, in that that will really be fantastic as far as doing good things for each other. So let me stop. And Justin, why don't you take over here? All right.
So
we've heard from a few high up leaders in our movement now and and one thing I I would love to know about is, you know, we've heard the past few speakers
of the
initiatives that we talked about that are happening at a national level. What might we want to take on here in Pennsylvania, and just say our members are going to participate in that?
Let me ask you why by calling out one, particularly the last one that I mentioned there, you know, these student access moments where people tell their stories with accessibility, some barrier that they face. You think we all can do that? Pennsylvania have a big representation and that initiative, talking about some issue we've had with accessibility and higher education. It doesn't mean make your school look bad. It just means talk about the issue of inaccessibility.
Something that happened to you.
You guys think we can do that? Tell our own
I believe we can or I believe we can, Jason Yeah. I mean. I don't see why not. I think everybody probably has something at least at least one thing.
Any other voices?
Yeah, this is Anastasia um, yeah, I think that is a really good idea. Good idea. Because you need to bring light to what is going on. And if nobody speaks up, nobody knows. So if we can get enough people to do that and really get, you know, some inertia behind it. People are going to look and that's what you need. You need to get people's attention. You need to get them to look you need to get them to say, hey, there's a problem here and we need to address it.
Thank you, anybody else.
Jason and Anastasia want to participate? Anybody else?
This is V
Avi.
Hi. This isn't about the six Second thing, but I just want to remind everyone in pabs. I've been close, I've been working closely with the New Jersey student division for quite a few years now. And, and jobs and paths have collaborated a couple times in the past, we've done a couple of seminars together. I'm speaking of 2016. And we did something in 2017 with other student divisions. So if anyone would like to collaborate again, and kind of, you know, get more students involved from Pennsylvania, meet other students from the other side of the Franklin bridge, reach out to us, Jonathan xebec, is currently our president. So feel free to reach out to any of us. And, you know, we'd love to collaborate with you guys again.
Thank you.
Anybody else on the student access moments? This isn't like a sign up list. This is just trying to read the room for the bias.
All right, well, I think we're at a point where we've got to look at moving closer to some elections. Given that we have 13 minutes left in this agenda. I know we can bang out some elections as well. We've got these different ideas that we've gone through about what we want to do. And I'll just read it back my notes on what we've heard goal setting, now we're going to need to elect some people that are going to help carry that out. So we've got the goals of saying that we'd like to work on learning about how to do resolutions talking about practicing legislative meetings, talking about drilling our members on the legislative priority. Talking about doing better outreach, maybe some shared programming with nearby student divisions, working with advocacy technology, supporting each other. We've also talked about maybe doing some podcasting or finding other ways to get more students involved.
We've talked about finding initiatives and navs that we might want to participate in and then we've talked about these student access moments as a very current initiative where we could get some Pennsylvania representation. We've certainly got a nice history of support from the affiliate, and glad to have that. So as we move forward, we're looking at electing some leaders.
heights?
Yes, no,
I'm not going to run for an office.
Oh, boy.
But I just wanted to share this thought I, I had to leave to go to a couple other meetings and just return and listen to this list of goals that the division has talked about the members of the division have talked about. And I think it's absolutely phenomenal. And I just want all of you students to know, are each of you, students to know that you have the full resources of the affiliate behind you to assist you. If there is training you're seeking? Let us know. If there's technology that you need assistance with? Let us know. And we will definitely be there for you. Thank you.
Thank you very much. President heights. So now we've got 10 minutes left, we've got four positions in the constitution that we can be electing. We've got a president, a vice president, we've got a secretary and treasurer. So at this point, I'd like to open the elections process for the Pennsylvania association of blind students, 2020 elections. We have the position of President now all of these positions are open. And for the position of President, are there any nominations? Are there any nominations?
So someone wants to
nominate somebody for the position of President? So Becca,
would you like to be present?
So Justin,
yes.
Could you
um, could you outline since we've got a lot of fairly new students with us today? Yes. And I know this is going to take a little bit, but that's fine. You kind of outline some of the duties that the President might have. Yeah, so
the big idea of being the president, I mean, a lot of these tasks, people can all pitch in and help out when each other needs help. But one of the biggest jobs of the president is being the person that can set direction, make decisions and call people together, when it's time to get together. Those are some of the biggest jobs of the President. Because if nobody's, you know, ringing the triangle and telling everybody, it's time to come in for dinner, then people don't come to the table. So that kind of thing is very important. Being that person that can corral everybody in and say, Let's go, it's time to have a meeting. That's one big job of the President. Now the President can, can know that that need exists, and then send it out to the secretary or something and say, Hey, you go get everybody, we're having to meet it. But being that person that that can make that decision is important. And making sure that the group stays on task is important. Now, anyone else can pitch in and make sure I mean, I've been I've been loved president, when other people on my board said, Justin, you're getting off task. And I said, Okay, great. Let's get back on tests. So there's there's a lot of flexibility. But the big idea is that the president needs to be someone who is ready to be accountable. And we take on what we can take on some student divisions do more work than others. And that's just a natural fact of life. So, you know, if this student division takes on and actually sets real, like concrete goals with deadlines for three of the things that we've talked about, you know, we put on a couple of, you know, we we take on whatever we can, but the president is the one that keeps everybody together and tries to make sure that we're getting those things done. The President, of course, runs meetings as well. The president should be involved in any financial transactions that happen
as well.
Those are the pretty much the big things. And also, of course, if you're the student division president, that means you ought to be talking with the affiliate president fairly often. There needs to be frequent communication between any division president and their affiliate present. That means you'd been someone who'd be willing to talk to Lynn relatively often.
The microphone,
ladies.
I think, um, I think Simon would be a good nominee for president of the suit division. Okay, let's
talk first first let's see if Simon accepts this nomination.
Okay, I I accept.
Okay, Simon, Simon, what's
your last name?
a bonafide is BN FMT?
yo en een
FA NT.
NT. All right, great. Simon bonnafon.
Um,
so and Are you a member of the NFB of Pennsylvania?
Yes. Yes, I'm a board member of the Keystone chapter.
Great. So we will figure out the the dues part with the student division. So all right, so we have the nomination of simond bond font and now did we have a second?
Yes. Yeah.
Who's the second? back? Okay, great. So nominated by Angelina seconded by Becca. Are there any other nominations? Are there any other nominations? Are there any other nominations?
nominations nominee nomination season?
Somebody has to say that
I move the nomination cease and Simon be nominated by acclamation. Alright, so who made the motion? Mr. Tom Brown.
All right. Wonderful. So Tom Brown has moved the nomination cease and that Simon bonnafon be elected by acclamation. Is there a second
Second, Second. All right,
all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Congratulations. Great. All right. So now for the position of
getting the hang of this stuff
already guys working as a team all route.
Yeah, absolutely. So, um, so Simon, do you want to give any kind of happy acceptance speech or anything?
Yeah. Okay, thank you for, for nominating me to do this. This role, I think it's great that you got me worthy of doing this role. And I look forward to hopefully building up the student division and, and working with all the people involved to build it up and get it to where people want to see it. Thank you. Thank you.
Yeah. Great.
Thank you very much. So now for the position of vice president. Now the Vice President takes over if the president dies, and hopefully that doesn't happen. And so otherwise,
you have
a vice president there to back up the president and make sure that all those presidential duties are handled, that people are called together when they need to be called together.
And, you know, you're
you're there to be a voting member of the board of directors of this organization. So the Vice President is also an important job. I made that may be a little self serving since I am a second vice president of navs. But,
you know,
I'm curious. Do we have any nominations for the position of vice president?
Take the microphone? It's one table. No, keep going left. There.
I nominate Becca to be vice president.
If I could do you accept?
Sure.
Great, thank you, Becca Weber has and I don't believe we need a second for being nominated for this. So um, so do we have any other nominations any other nominations any other nominations?
Move nomination sees and Becca be elected by acclamation.
Somebody has to say that.
But Wow.
I knew that nomination. CSUN Becca be voted by Commissioner Tom Brown.
Second
Second.
All right. It's been moved and seconded that Rebecca Weber be elected vice president by acclamation. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, same sign. Congratulations, Rebecca Weber.
Speech speech.
So I don't really know what I'm doing to be honest.
Oh, you know, plenty about what you're doing.
I'm excited to you know, be a part of pabs. Um, so yeah, thanks for the nomination.
It's pretty good participation skill, actually. Great, young to do this. But I'm probably gonna try this when I'm a little older, like seven. Okay, so
I'm gonna just keep going. If that's all right, guys. So we've got a couple more positions. We're technically out of time, but we're going to get it done anyway. So for the position of Secretary let's do Secretary neck. Yeah. So for the position of Secretary basically, it means it's really helpful if you have that skill that was mentioned earlier about being able to take notes. what it was that you took notes on, somebody who can take notes, also known as minutes during a meeting, and be able to try to keep some of the records of the organization. And then of course, anything else that's asked of you by the student division. So for the position of Secretary, are there any nominations?
I nominate Angelina. Alright, Angelina,
do you accept?
Oh, yes.
All right.
Are there any other nominations? So there any other nominations? Are there any other nominations?
It gave me again.
Doesn't have to be Tom every time.
He can be though. I guess it has to be I move that nominations cease and hence they enter the elected by acclamation. All right,
is there a second?
Second. All right, it
has been moved and seconded that no Celina be elected Secretary by acclamation. All those in favor please signify by saying aye.
Aye.
Opposed same sign. All right. So congratulations, Angelina, you have been elected Secretary
Angelenos last
name is HL stick.
Oh,
wow,
I was gonna use her mom's last name, but I had a feeling it was different. Okay. Yeah. I'm sorry. Great. So Angelina and Jill sick. So for the position of treasurer, this is the person that keeps the money. If you like money, you might like to be treasurer. And then you you report transparently to the division about how much money we have.
Yeah, so this is Jason Collins. I am currently treasure. I'm happy. I mean, I know that I enjoyed it. So I'm technically not a student, but I'd be happy to do it again, or to continue doing it if nobody else is interesting. interested in it. But I'm also happy to hand over the reins. I mean, right now, we don't really have a lot of transactions. We have a PNC account. And I mean, I can go over I can give, you know, whoever decides to succeed me that passwords and everything. But yeah, so that's where it stands right now. I'm happy to continue but if some someone else, I'm also happy to pass it on. So. Well,
thank you, Jason. So for the position of Treasurer Are there any nominations? Jason?
Jason?
Yes.
Is that a is that a nomination of JSON?
Yes.
Okay.
So Jason allender. is Nicholas bone online? Like, I would nominate him if he were around.
Nick, are you now?
Would anaesthesia be interested? Um,
I I honestly, I have my irons and a lot of I have a lot of irons in the fire right now. So I just don't feel like I would have enough time to appropriately give to that.
Okay, I understand. Well, I am happy to do it again. To continue doing it. Man, I've, since I've been Treasurer since 25th. Seen? Yeah, I think that Yeah. 20. So,
so let's run through the election process. Then we've got a nomination and it's been accepted by Jason. And so now I'd like to call for other nominations. So are there any other nominations? Are there any other nominations? Are there any other nominations?
Wake up, guys.
Voting cease acclamation. All right.
Is that Becca?
With that, Becca? Yes. All right. So again, Becca, Becca has moved that we close nominations and elect Jason Edward Polanski by acclamation. Second, we have a second, who is the second?
Tom Brown. Brown. Thank
you, Tom Brown. All right. So it's been moved and seconded that we elect Jason that we're Polanski as treasurer of the Pennsylvania association of blind students by acclamation. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, same sign. Congratulations, Jason Edward Polanski. Did you want to give a speech?
To me? And boom, testing, testing? Okay. Yeah. So I'm hoping that we do some things this year that involve some kind of withdrawing and adding to the finances. That would be kind of nice. Yeah, other than that, yeah, I think I call that fundraising. If you know what I mean. Yeah. Well, you
can also just spend the money, right? Yeah. Well, we don't want
to spend all of it would not be wise.
Okay.
Thank you.
So Alright, so we have concluded with the elections now and now there's only a few items left on this agenda. Is there any old business that anybody would like to bring up? Is there any new business that anyone would like to bring up? Hearing none. We have now arrived at our adjournment. So at 3:37pm I declare this meeting adjourned. Thank you, everybody. Let's go have a great convention.
Yay. Thank you.