[Jayhawk-chapter] Minutes aug 2017

[Tamara Kearney]

Minutes 

Jayhawk Chapter 

August 19, 2017

Meeting called to order at 10:21 am. 

Rob played presidential release no. 463 for Aug. 3. Some key points: Tactile art boxes are provided through the American Action Fund to expose blind children to drawing; Report on Youth Slam; Bell program; Web masters training seminar; Dare to be Remarkable conference on education and rehabilitation 10 year anniversary. These conferences are being held at the national center. 

It’s not too early for chapters to be planning for Meet the Blind Month. Affiliates are encouraged to show a screening of the documentary, Do you Dream in Color? The goal of Meet the Blind Month is to get our chapters out into the community engaging people to break down misconceptions about blindness, and to tell people about our organization. 

President’s Report 

Tamara, Greg, Rob and Dustin attended national convention from our chapter. About fifteen attended from our state. Will be in Orlando in 2018 which will be our last convention in Orlando. 

Immediately after national convention we held our Kansas BELL program. There were six participants. It was held once again at Envision in Wichita.  

Envision has agreed to sponsor Kansas Newsline. Newsline has now been added to Amazon, and is carried by Alexa. 800-nfbnews gives a guided tutorial about how to use Newsline. 

State convention will be in Lawrence at the Hilton by Doubletree from Nov. 10th through the 12th. Help needed with exhibits, door prizes, registration and hospitality. convention planning committee members are: Donna Wood, Chairman; Rob Tabor; Luke Schwinck and Tom Anderson. Brendy volunteered to work on exhibits. 

Rob has secured a contract with Envision to help HR staff with and their blind workers to navigate the Social Security system. He will go to Wichita sometime in Sept. to do some informational training for staff. 

Envision is no longer paying sub-minimum wage to their workers. Their computer equipment has become accessible. There are people working in places other than the production lines, such as in the offices and stores. This is largely because of the relationship that Tom Page has cultivated with Envision’s CEO.

 

There were no corrections. The minutes were approved as distributed via email.

Treasurer’s Report 

The balance is $926.93. The Chipoltle fund raising check was deposited at the end of June, and was for $96.53. Brendy will continue to try to get $5 monthly service charges incurred over the past six months reinstated. They say that they are no longer charging us $5 for paper statements. Brendy will be able to verify this when the next statement is received. The treasurer’s report was accepted. as read.

fund raising 

Mainstreet Credit Union is still being worked on. Mainstreet Credit Union may be a good place to move our account. 

We will do another fund raiser at Freddy’s. Rob will contact them. 

The check from Chipoltle was directly deposited straight into our account. It did not need to go to the state first. 

Tamara gave a report on her experience at national convention. 

New Business 

Elections will be in Sept. or Oct. Dues need to be in before state convention. We will not meet in NOV. We will have a Christmas social in Dec. Brendy will look into where to hold it. She will try for a Saturday evening. 

New Business

There is an app for iOS which presents a haptic image of the eclipse. It’s called Eclipse Soundscapes by Henry Winter. 

Meet the Blind Month is in Oct. We decided to, as usual, meet with the city commission and have a Mayor’s proclamation read and signed. We also plan to do a radio interview on KLWN. We discussed hosting a public viewing of the movie, Do You Dream in Color? We discussed a number of places to show the movie including the library, Liberty Hall, the Community Center, Meadowlark estates, Theater Lawrence, Central Middle School, the Granada Theater, or Wyndham Place.

Renée has applied to test accessibility of the Graduate Record Exam. It pays $1000. 

Meeting adjourned at 11:55. 


Tamara Kearney
tamara at gatetoserenity.com