[Community-service] Changing what it means to get things done!

[Ashley Bramlett]

Darian,
Wonderful article.  It was so long though that I just recently read it due 
to my hectic schedule.
I haven't heard of many blind people helping in construction or painting 
work. How did you do this? How did they show you what to do? Hands on, I 
suppose. Did you get to mix concrete or lay any new surfaces outside?
I could see myself cutting wood for construction  or cutting down tree limbs 
provided I was shown how, but I wonder about the other stuff.  That is 
pretty admirable what you did;  it takes a lot of strength to do it as well.
I am glad that they included you in the projects.  It goes to show that past 
interactions with blind people shape their views, so it was a good 
coinsidence that one lady had intereacted with a blind person before.

Great article title as well. What a play on the nfb slogan.

-----Original Message----- 
From: Darian Smith
Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2012 4:22 PM
To: Community Service Discussion List
Subject: [Community-service] Changing what it means to get things done!

Hi all:
I ran across this article I submitted to the National Association of
Blind Student  publication "The Student Slate".
In this  article I talked about my expirience in AmeriCorps NCCC
While I have thought on it a bit and my views on something  things
have changed- just realizing my growth and such-- I wanted to share!
(can anyone guess the inspiration for  the title? - it is a
combination of two tag lines*smile*)
let me know what you think!


Changing what it means to get things done:
An AmeriCorps Experience

by Darian Smith

>From the Editor: Darian Smith currently resides in California and
attends the City College of San Francisco. He also serves on the board
of the National Association of Blind Students. In this piece, Darian
chronicles his experiences in AmeriCorps and demonstrates how
volunteerism and community service can provide opportunities not only
to better the lives of others, but also for personal growth and the
education of our peers. Here is his story:

The Beginning

The Idea of serving one’s country via team-based national community
service was something that struck me as a very powerful way to
positively impact individuals, meet new people, better myself and
change what it means to be blind. The Journey started as a small yet
ever-present thought that was fostered in the summer of 2002 while I
was a summer student at the Colorado Center for the Blind. A team of
AmeriCorps national Civilian Community Corps members and their Team
Leader spent a project at the center doing construction work on the
building. After a positive few days of interaction with these great
people and positive role-models, the then- Coordinator of the Colorado
summer program suggested I look into the program and its benefits.

Many years past, and finally, six years later, fate brought me back to
Denver; this time, a confident blind adult. I was a graduate of the
center’s independence training program, had been a summer instructor
in Colorado, and was, soon to be, a fully inducted Corps Member of the
AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps, to serve on the same
campus as those who first introduced me to the idea of national
service.

Soon after returning to my home state of California, I traveled to
Oregon to start training with my first dog guide. Training was going
very well, and I had reason to believe that I was going to graduate
from school. Unfortunately, after a planned meeting designed to
strategize the best tools and techniques to make the transition for
the dog guide/handler team a successful one, there came some
noticeable uneasiness and a lot of questions about what a guide dog
can do (in addition to the concerns of what a blind person can do) and
concerns about how much accommodation would have to take place.
Additionally, the question of if I was” 100% blind or partially blind”
came up. While it may have been, in their mind, for programmatic
reasons, I felt like the campus was already assuming what I could or
could not do. After thinking, and realizing the amount of ignorance
and uneasiness that people had displayed, I came to understand that
some educating had to take place and that right now would not be the
best time for a dog guide. So, with that, I bid farewell to the
friends I gained and the amazing dog I had began work with and
returned back to the bay area.

Once there, I began the process of determining how to best go about
educating 200 people I’d never met before. All the while, counting
down the days until I would begin a new and exciting chapter in my
life; one that only those who are willing to push their limits and are
confident about their abilities as a person, blind or not, would ever
attempt.

CTI

Corps Training Institute marks the beginning of the AmeriCorps NCCC
Journey. As a Corps Member, you soon find out that the first couple of
days are probably the most hectic days one will have in the corps.
The First days were filled with checking in and meeting your
roommates, the people on your team, and the people in your unit. I met
a lot of corps members within the first few hours of my arrival on
campus. For most of these wonderfully enthusiastic and talented
individuals, who I would come to know as my corps mates and friends,
it would be the first time they had ever met a blind person. The same
could be said for the team leaders, unit leaders and office staff on
campus, as well.

During training, Corps Members travel across campus to different
trainings and meetings, which are put on to prepare corps members for
the ten months that lie ahead. Some of those trainings are diversity
trainings, CPR, First Aid and trainings on how to run a Red Cross
disaster shelter. They also cover rules and regulations regarding the
program. The very first days served as a sort of test not only for me,
but also the other people on campus- as it gave me an opportunity to
show how a person who is blind travels in both familiar and unfamiliar
areas; among other things. Being a person who had, just two months
prior to joining NCCC, been teaching blind youth the freedom and sense
of empowerment that safe and independent travel bring, I felt
especially confident in my ability to navigate this new environment,
and felt the need to prove that traveling and problem-solving were
things I was very capable of doing.

Campus life is, generally, what u would see in a university. The
campus has a cafeteria and a set of dorms. I was assigned a single
room that had a full bathroom and was located by an emergency exit; as
the staff had a difficult time understanding (after detailed
explanation) how a blind person can effectively get from the bathroom
to their room or out of a building given an understanding of its
layout. So they decided to put me (against my request) in a “more
accessible room.”

After a few days of learning about the corps, the campus, and the
people on it, I approached the Director of the AmeriCorps NCCC campus
about putting on a one-person meet the blind month event. While it was
not phrased in that manner, and the conversation was a continuation of
a conversation I had had with her prior to arrival, it was an idea
that went over well with her. The event was spread out over the
duration of our month of training and consisted of meet the blind
month literature that was displayed in the main dorm lobby, a informal
introduction to goal ball, a question and answer session during a
corps wide community meeting, and finally an activity which, in
keeping with the month long theme, I called “Cane Travel Training.” I
was very fortunate to have been able to get sleepshades and canes
loaned out to me by the Colorado Center for the Blind. Let me assure
you that time and energy put into this activity were time and energy
well-spent. Corps members, team leaders, and office staff alike
participated in the series of informal trainings. In these trainings,
they learned how a blind person safely and effectively navigates both
familiar and unfamiliar areas and does so with a high degree of
confidence. They also learned about proper cane technique, how to move
about in a building, go up and down stairs and travel outdoors. One
activity that proved to be a highlight was a session that took place
during my unit’s team bonding time at Rocky Mountain National Park.
Individuals learned how to navigate rocky paths using a cane while
listening to the birds and the wind through the trees and feeling the
sun on their faces. Everyone who took part enjoyed the event, those
who didn’t, express interest in taking part in the event if there was
to be another one.

Once the month of corps wide training and team selection process
ended, I sat down with my Team Leader, and as is normal practice with
team leaders and corps members pre- project round, we talked about
expectations and goals for the upcoming round in Boulder, Colorado. We
discussed keeping an open line of communication and she stressed to me
that she understood that at times it may not be as easy interacting
with individuals who may not allow me to push myself out of my comfort
zone and try new things on the work site, as they may feel nervous
about my participation. She also assured me that, while she knew I was
a self-advocate and supported my advocacy efforts on my own behalf,
she was going to advocate for me as best she could, as well.

My team leader grew up with a friend who was blind. This friend is
currently in law school; and her positive views of blindness clearly
have pushed her to this point in her education. It is, I believe, this
personal interaction with a successful blind person which has shaped
my team leader’s views on blindness, and that has made my team leader
one of the more open-minded team leaders, relative to disabilities, in
our corps. She always worked to keep me in the loop on little yet
important things. As one Example: When I was first arriving on campus,
I received a folder that was the same as the ones that all of the
other corps members in my unit had gotten. However, mine had a message
in Braille welcoming me to the corps. And who wrote it? My team
leader. She knew Braille. This was a very nice surprise that meant a
lot to me. She was always there to listen when I was having a tough
time understanding a situation, or needing to vent. She sometimes did
not have the answers, but she would not let me give up on myself and
gave me time to figure out problems, where other people may not have
had that kind of patience. When it came to being on the work site she
always took the time to explain its layout and explain how I might go
about doing something on the site.

Boulder, Colorado

My team’s first project was an environmental service project in
Boulder working with the City of Boulder Open Space and Mountain
Parks. On this project, we worked on building two new hiking trails,
cleared out a few irrigation ditches, and removed invasive species
(which really just translates into pulling weeds).

On most of these projects, it was best to stick with a member of the
team and work on a part of the project together, as otherwise it got
rather boring and repetitive quite quickly. When it came to hiking to
and from some of the sites with rougher uneven paths, I alternated
between traveling alone and traveling with a human guide. I found that
walking to the site with someone via human guide was simply a matter
of keeping pace and having a conversation as well.

On one of our work sites, I was asked to clear grass patches out of a
trench. The way I went about this was to first have my cane be stored
in a safe place by a project sponsor, and then, I would walk along one
side of the trench, feeling with my foot for broken up patches of
grass and damp dirt and throw them in an area that was pointed out by
the sponsor. The project introduced me to new tools that I had never
used or heard of before, such as a rockbar and mcloud. I was also
educated as to the socio – economic and recreational considerations
people must think about when developing or not developing land for
recreational usage or preservation reasons. I learned a lot about
Colorado and its water conservation plans, as well.

During this Round, I visited the Boulder Valley Chapter of the NFB and
told them about AmeriCorps NCCC and the great benefits of giving back
to one’s country through national service. As one of my team roles was
recruiter, the concept of talking-up our program was not too
unnatural, but the best part of it was letting people know that this
program is out there and, yes, blind people can be a part of it and do
great things as well.

As for my project sponsors, they were all great helps and enabled me
to learn while learning along with me. The lesson? Given the
opportunity and training, a person who is blind can do most of the
same jobs a sighted person can do, and do them just as effectively as
anybody.

Brazoria County, Texas

My team and I went to Brazoria County, Texas and started work with the
United Way. We were told we were going to be doing canvassing work and
talking to residents in the community about resources which were
available to victims of hurricane Ike. This, of course, meant a lot of
walking and a lot of talking. I had two primary roles on this project.
While in the field, I mainly did most of the communicating with
clients, as I have a good skill for relating to people. While away
from the worksite, I would write out weekly progress reports to keep
track of where we went and what we did.

In this round, my skills as a recruiter were taken to new heights.
Normally, a recruiter on a team will research places that would be
good to talk to the youth of the community and contact those places
and set up a time to come in and talk about the program. I would do
research (via a laptop with JAWS and an internet connection) about
these places, call them, and get the logistics squared away so an
event could take place. During This round I, along with different
members of my team, would go out to high schools as well as work with
and talk to venture crews to talk-up the program.

What made this round so special was my ability to be personable and to
make every aspect of myself and the program a shining positive. One
thing which generally made otherwise shy people want to find out more
about the program was when I would mention all of the great aspects of
the program and all of the great things I’d been able to do as a blind
person. I don’t know if they joined or considered joining with the
hopes of meeting a blind person, or if being confident and showing
your personality makes the program sound like it’s worthwhile. But,
either way, youth that would not normally have considered the program
at first glance either seriously considered the program or planned to
do it as soon as they graduated high school or college. To me, that’s
a great feeling. I believe that during this round I showed many youth
that anybody who wants to serve their country can do it; that ability,
race, creed or anything else does not have to be a reason to not help
others any chance you get.

Over this round I learned to work with the skill saw, sawzall, drill,
axe and nail gun on various construction and debris removal projects.
The best part of this was that team mates and my team leader had all,
by this point, taken the time to teach me skills I normally would not
have thought I would ever be able to learn. As was the case on my
previous project, the people in the community came in with no idea of
what to expect out of me. In the end they were some of the best
teachers and best people I worked with during my Corps year. They
never over reacted, they were always so nice and helpful to everybody,
and they treated me as if blindness was the last thing they thought of
when they saw me.

Hale County, Alabama

This Project round presented an opportunity and a bigger challenge
than most of the others I had worked on. Hale County is the fifth
poorest county in the country, and the town I lived in was like most
towns in Alabama, very small and not notable to anyone who didn’t live
there. The nature of this project was construction work and painting.
In previous projects I had done both. The biggest challenge was
convincing a new team leader, team, and the staff back at my base
campus that I could do these things. Another added challenge was
convincing them that I could climb scaffolding with ease and
confidence. Though I could show my team leader and project supervisors
that I could do the job, the campus management still had their doubts.

During this round, all AmeriCorps campuses were filling slots for
their incoming class of team leaders. During this process, I was
interviewed by four different campuses, who were all considering me
for open positions. In the end I was not offered a position by any of
the campuses, with some not even bothering to notify me. One campus
admitted to altering the general set of questions they ask all their
candidates, saying they were not confident that I, as a blind person,
would be able to answer them. It was at this point that I started to
return to questioning the true belief that this campus and
organization had in people with disabilities in general and in me as a
blind person. It seemed to me that they felt a person with a
disability could certainly become a corps member, but would not be
able to lead a group of ten young adults on challenging projects. It
felt to me as if they saw this opportunity as something that someone
with a disability, especially blindness, could not be trusted to take
on.

I continued with the project in Alabama, working with volunteers on a
piece of history in the area; an old Rosenwald school house that was
ninety-five years old. I also worked in a local thrift store that
benefited the community members. Most of my job this round was
recruitment off the worksite, though I still carried out minimal tasks
on the site. On hot days, which reached 95 degrees, I found myself
near hot tin pulling old rusted nails out of old two-by-fours, while
my team mates were climbing the side of the old school house to nail
or paint. While one can justify this by saying the work had to get
done and I was doing a job, I often found myself in just the situation
I had worked so hard to avoid. I didn’t want to be sitting on the
sidelines while my teammates got to challenge themselves in ways they
never thought they’d be challenged.

This is not to say that I didn’t see some really interesting things. I
had been to my first crawfish boil, and had been through more tornado
warnings then I would have liked. There were some truly great people
who were working to help people in this county change their way of
life, and I had been fortunate enough to get to know some of the best
folks in this small county. I learned that housing and education were
not the only problems the county was facing. I was on a ride-along
with a post-grad student from the University of Alabama who was
testing water purity in the area. The student told Me that many
residents in the county often drink and bathe in darkened water from
their pipes and never know how unhealthy it is, nor know any
different. Overall, I think that our Alabama project was a very
educational time for me. I learned about my country, what we take for
granted and the challenges we face in closing the gap between the
haves and have nots.

Colorado.

In our fourth project round, I was one of the fortunate few corps
members to be selected to work in AmeriCorps NCCC’s Summer of Service
program (the only program of its kind to be run in the country in
2009). The Summer of Service program (SOS) gives at risk youth the
opportunity to serve their local community and gain invaluable skills
and an awareness of community needs. It also provides a small stipend
which the youth often use to support their families.

In the three weeks prior to the youths’ arrival on campus, I, along
with my team mates took part in training and then a two-week camping
trip in the mountains of Jamestown, Colorado. Aside from the fun of
getting to set-up a tent and hike on this project, within these two
weeks, my new team and I worked on moving tree limbs to the side of
the road to be gathered. Most of this involved dragging limbs from
down a hillside (or “hauling slash”), and using my cane with my left
arm, sometimes following the voices of my team mates. One fun thing I
did was use a hydraulic wood-splitter. This machine was designed as an
easier, less labor intensive way to split wood.

After the two weeks of work and bonding were complete, we returned to
Denver and got ready for the Participants. Once the program started, I
was asked to serve as a crew leader with three other co-crew leaders
overseeing a team of seven to ten youth. Crew leaders had the
responsibility to supervise the Participants, making sure that they
stayed on task on the work site and maintained safe habits and
respectful manners both on and off of the work site. It was always a
bit of a challenge with the Participants, as they would often
challenge my abilities as a supervisor. They worked hard and it was
rewarding to see what great young people they grew into over just one
month.

Three short weeks later, it was time for each corps member who had
made it through the long and challenging journey of an AmeriCorps year
to look around, look ahead, and say goodbye to the family that they
had for ten months. I, to this day, will never forget the feeling of
crossing the stage and thinking, “This is it! All of the challenges I
faced, all of the friends I found, all of the places I’ve gone and
experiences I’ve had … this is it.” I had finally completed a journey
that on more than one occasion, I had considered walking away from.
But in the end, when I heard in the crowd the roar of applause that
was lead by the very Summer of Service Participants that we helped to
graduate just weeks before, I felt so many things. When I stopped to
consider it I felt finality, pride, and accomplishment. I had
completed this program with so many people whom I had grown to care
for and respect, and who had grown to respect me. On that day I felt
like I did change what it means to be blind in the National Civilian
Community Corps, a program where blindness was truly uncharted
territory.



-- 
Darian Smith

"To dream what is possible and to put oneself in service of that dream is 
the
formula
for a life well lived."

- Dr. Peter Benson

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