Week 3 Blog Prompt

Week 3 Blog Prompt: For your blog, choose one of these to pontificate about: 1. funding our own education, 2. presentation methods, 3. finding your organization to represent.

For this blog, I will talk about how I found my organization to present and the challenges I had. First off, I initially was going to represent an organization that I am in the process of starting up…AccessTexas. The purpose of this organization is to provide information to educators, professionals, parents, and individuals with hearing loss about a variety of topics from legal to independent living. Since this organization is not fully organized, I chose to represent the Texas Chapter of the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf (Texas AGBell), a 501(c)(3) organization. There was no question I wanted to represent this organization for two reasons: their mission is my mission and they have a need for people to work for them, representing them in various ways. Over the years, the involvement of people in leadership roles has dwindled to a handful for a variety of reasons, one of which is simply lack of individuals who can effectively seek out, and win grants to fund activities that would help spread the word, educate others. And with the few, it’s hard to reach out statewide, but doesn’t have to be if activities were planned carefully and based on region.

My association with this organization began with the receipt of a financial scholarship from the parent organization based in Washington, DC, in high school and then a college scholarship. I became involved as a board member, rising up to president the last five years, and through my involvement I was a lipreading instructor as part of a grant awarded to a deaf service agency in San Antonio. This was my first experience in a grant-funded activity. Not only did I conduct several six-week courses, I traveled to low income communities to give one day workshops about deafness, oral interpreting, lipreading/communication with oral deaf individuals. Wonderful experience! Fast forward 12 years later, Texas AGBell needs to reach out to the communities and provide support by the way of workshops for professionals, parents, and individuals with hearing loss. As I step off the board as president, I want to remain involved in some way so the new leadership has asked me to help them find grants for various activities that will help them reach out statewide. I think doing activities such as a professional development workshop for educators is a good start because that’s where children can receive the most impact in addition to the home.