[Community-service] Being turned away.

[Chris Parsons]

Hi all,

I was in National Honor Society in high school, and I needed to do a certain 
number of volunteer hours. We have a no-kill animal shelter not five minutes 
from my house, and I love animals, so I thought that this would be perfect. 
The school bus also dropped kids off there every day to walk the dogs, so 
there wouldn't even be any transportation difficulties.

But when my mom called them and told them I wanted to volunteer, and that I 
am blind, the man she talked to said that I couldn't because of insurance 
reasons and because "she wouldn't know when the cats were about to fight, so 
she might get scratched."

For some reason that I no longer remember, both Mom and I, usually strong 
advocates, let it go, and I ended up finding a really awesome opportunity to 
help a young blind student in one of our local elementary schools with her 
reading, which eventually turned into helping the entire class. But I 
learned a lot from that experience, even if I didn't realize the lessons 
until years later.

In hindsight, I should definitely have been the one to handle the situation 
from start to finish instead of letting my Mom make the call. My mom has 
always been a huge advocate for me, and she knows quite a bit about what a 
blind person can do, but as a high school student and the person who would 
ultimately be doing the  volunteering, I could have listened to the man's 
concerns and then explained how I would handle them.

Just as a cool final note, my sister and I both now volunteer at this 
shelter once a week with the cats, and no one seems to have an issue with us 
getting scratched or slipping on the floor after it's been mopped or 
anything.

Chris


-----Original Message----- 
From: Darian Smith
Sent: Tuesday, April 02, 2013 4:13 PM
To: Community Service Discussion List
Subject: [Community-service] Being turned away.

Hi all,
   have you ever been turned down from  doing some sort of service
project because of your blindness? if so what happened? what was the
reasoning  and how did you deal with it?

-- 
Darian Smith


Text the word BLIND to 85944 to donate $10 to the NFB Imagination Fund
via your phone bill.

The time is now to eliminate Subminimum Wages for People with Disabilities

http://www.nfb.org/fairwages


“We know not of our future, but we know of our past. A past that is
made up of our ancestor’s Dreams, their stories and hopes.
These sights once seen, sounds heard and emotions felt are now our
knowledge. The knowledge that guides us to this very moment…”
-Darian Smith

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