[Community-service] May activities

[Reyazuddin, Yasmin]

May has been a very busy month for me. Starting on April 30, to May 21, I participated in 4 community events and raised expectations for blind people.
Two of the events were inside and two were outside.
Here is a description of the event and the kinds of things I did.
April 30, University of Maryland open house
This is an annual event and I have participated in it for the last 17 years. I work at the Adaptive technology lab, where they have all the assistive technology. I play games with children, answer questions about assistive technology used by the blind and provide resources or information about library services.

May 7, Long Branch community unity day
This is also an annual event conducted by the recreation department to celebrate the cultural diversity of the community in Montgomery county.
We played games with a group of boy scouts and educated them about Braille. I consider this to be very important as we were invited to their meeting for a presentation. All the scouts are from Vietnamese families and the parents are also interested in learning about Braille.
May 14, Special education Summit, This is not so regular annual event conducted by the Montgomery county public schools.
We provided information to teachers and families about our NFB-BELL program. One person asked us if Braille was still used for reading and writing for blind children. I wonder if the sighted children have stopped learning how to read print and writing with pen and paper.
Gaithersburg Book Festival this is the 7th annual event organized by the city of Gaithersburg. We were there for the first time. We had a tent and many volunteers from our chapter. We played 1 game and did 1 activity with the children. We also had an opportunity to read a book about Louis Braille. At the same time, we met many authors who came to our booth. The true success of this event were two things. We had one visitor who had seen a Braille book at another booth at the festival. The friends of the library brought their used books and one was a braille book. The girl wanted to learn about braille and she came over to our booth.
The other success is just as interesting. A family came to our booth and the boy is 5 years old. He is visually impaired. We gave the family all the information about the NFB-BELL program and hope that he will come.
A few suggestions on set-up of our information. We have purchased clear plastic brochure racks from an office supply store. These racks can hold 3 different brochures . We have several of these. Depending on the event we take one or more of these racks, We tried a few new things. We blew up white colored balloons and put small circle foam stickers for braille words. We used nfb, bell, brl, and book. Our booth looked nice. But it was raining all day. We will do this event again next year.
Find such events in your community and start spreading the word about the NFB.

Yasmin Reyazuddin
Aging & Disability Services
Montgomery County Government
Department of Health & Human Services
401 Hungerford Drive (3rd floor)
Rockville MD 20850
240-777-0311 (MC311)
240-777-1556 (personal)
240-777-1495 (fax)
office hours 8:30 am 5:00 pm
Languages English, Hindi, Urdu, Braille
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