Helping the affiliate has now become as easy as drinking your morning cup of coffee!! As featured at the 2019 State Convention, White Cane Coffee and the National Federation of the Blind of PA are working together.
Purchase your coffee here:
https://whitecanecoffee.com/ref/nfbp
10% of the sales will come back to us – the NFB of PA – so we can continue to help our fellow blind and increase our programs for our seniors, students, and children!
Spread the word!
You can now listen to the major events of the 2019 Convention of the National Federation of the Blind of Pennsylvania. To access the links to the recordings, please visit www.nfbp.org/convention/past-conventions/2019-state-convention.
A few months ago, a group of people representing the blindness-related organizations in Pennsylvania, led by Steve Pennington of the Client Assistance Program, wrote a position paper for keeping the Pennsylvania Bureau of Blindness and Visual Services (BBVS) strong and independent. This paper presented the arguments against merging BBVS into the general disability vocational rehabilitation program. For those of you who will be attending the NFB of Pennsylvania convention in person or via the stream, Steve Pennington will be referring to this position paper in his presentations about how to help BBVS accomplish its purpose of helping blind and visually-impaired individuals attain employment.
“Sister to Sister, Heart to Heart”
THE NFB OF DC PROUDLY PRESENTS OUR 4TH ANNUAL
BLIND WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT CONFERENCE
Bringing to you an awesome panel of diverse blind women along with dynamic keynote speaker, Denise Avant. These talented sisters will be telling it to you from their hearts to your hearts. Get ready to be dazzled, rejuvenated, and inspired to live the life you want.
Pepco Edison Place Gallery
Thursday, October 31, 2019
10:00 A.M. – 3:00 P.M.
Ticket Price: $25.00
702 8th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20004
[Nearest Metro Station is Gallery Place 9th & G St.]
All Women Are Welcome
NFB4th Annual Blind Womens Empowerment Conference flyer (Word Document)
$15 which includes: fish,chicken,French fries and cole slaw
Champagne’s Café
21 E. Chelten Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19144
Saturday, October 26, 2019
5pm until 9pm
Denice Brown – 215-808-5875
Quitrina Townes – 215-971-0080
Or, see any chapter member
National Federation of The Blind of Pennsylvania
2019 State Convention
The Radison Hotel and Conference Center
1150 Camp Hill bypass, Camp Hill, PA 17011
800 – 333 – 3333
Friday, November 1 – Sunday, November 3, 2019
Reserve your room at the hotel now! Call the hotel at (800) 333-3333
A special room rate of $89.00 is available for convention attendees from Wednesday, October 30th through Sunday, November 3rd
FOR MORE INFORMATION call Joseph Drenth, Convention Chair, at (215) 827 7787 or e-mail joe.drenth@jbtc.com
Please register online at http://www.nfbp.org/convention
You can now register for the 2019 NFB of Pennsylvania Convention. If you register before midnight on September 30, the price of registration is only $15. On October 1, the registration price rises to $25, so do not delay. The meal prices will remain the same. For detailed information about the convention, please visit the Convention page. Register Now!
We need your help right now to preserve blindness services in Pennsylvania. The Secretary of Labor and Industry is considering doing away with the Bureau of Blindness and Visual Services and rolling those services into the general disability services bureau. If this happens, all of the services now provided by BBVS will be in jeopardy, including individualized vocational rehabilitation, Independent Living Older Blind, Business Enterprise Program, and specialized services for children and adults.
Please email the Pennsylvania Secretary of Labor and Industry, Mr. Jerry Oleksiak, at wgoleksiak@pa.gov to request that he immediately stop considering this merger and that he not ignore the unique needs of blind and visually impaired individuals. You can also say that the blind and visually-impaired community of Pennsylvania does not deserve to be treated like second-class citizens
When you email Secretary Oleksiak, please copy Joe Drenth, Joe.drenth@jbtc.com on the email.
Also, please contact Governor Tom Wolf to express the same sentiments. You can call his office at 717-787-2500 or you can complete an online form to submit your comments electronically at www.governor.pa.gov/contact.
Finally, you should also contact your state representatives to tell them about this issue and to ask them to do everything in their power to preserve independent blindness services. Meeting with them in person is the best way to reach them, but commenting on their social media channels and sending them phone and email messages are good ideas, as well.
Thank you for taking action on this important issue right away. You should contact these people as often as possible, even every day, so they cannot ignore the problem.
Here is more background information:
The idea of doing away with Pennsylvania’s Bureau of Blindness and Visual Services (BBVS) and lumping those services under the general disability vocational rehabilitation services bureau (BVRS) has been mentioned several times recently by the Secretary of Labor and Industry and by the Acting Executive Director of the Office of Vocational Rehabilitation (OVR), under which BBVS and BVRS currently exist as independent bureaus.
This idea of merging the bureaus has been around for a long time, but it is being talked about by these individuals and a few others more and more frequently over the past months, such as at State Board of Vocational Rehabilitation meetings, Blindness Enterprise Program meetings, and several other events. Their increasing focus on this plan is alarming and should not be allowed to continue.
Although OVR’s official position is that no decision has been made to merge these services, they are doing more and more planning behind the scenes in preparation for taking this drastic step. They use the argument that this change would save money, but no reports or information is available that backs up this claim. Even if it saved a little money, we cannot allow them to continue considering this option in their numbers game to get OVR out of its budget shortfall. There are many other ways to save far more money that do not damage the lives and livelihoods of thousands of blind and visually-impaired Pennsylvanians.
The NFB of Pennsylvania will be conducting two BELL Academies in 2019, one in Philadelphia and one in Pittsburgh. Both programs will occur in June. For additional information on the programs, please visit our BELL Academy page.
Monday, January 28, through Thursday, January 31, 2019
It is time again for us to take our concerns directly to our legislators in Washington, DC. For those that are not familiar with Washington Seminar, this is where 500 members of the NFB come together to present three to four issues important to the blind and disabled community to our federal Congressional representatives. In addition to meeting with members of Congress and Senators, Washington Seminar is the site of student seminars and meetings of many NFB groups and divisions.
To learn more about Washington Seminar, including the issues being presented and details for hotel room reservations, please visit www.nfb.org/washington-seminar.