[nabs-l] Students in Georgia

[Justin Heard]

Greetings fellow students!

My name is Justin Heard, and I am president of the Georgia Association 
of Blind Students. I write with news on what our division is doing, and 
hope you will be as excited as I am.

Currently, we are working on recruiting students to our division. In the 
past, we have had a limited number of people, and have focused our 
efforts on fundraising. then I realized that fundraising was the reason 
our division had failed. We focused so much on raising money, and less 
on what our division is meant to accomplish. We are supposed to bring 
blind students together from all across our state. We are supposed to 
give them a place to ask questions, to meet their peers, and most 
importantly to learn. By focusing on our finances, we failed, thus 
pushing away our foundation.

After not having any students show up for our NFB state convention, me 
and the president of the National Federation of the Blind of Georgia 
changed tactics. Let's bring blind people together in an unofficial 
setting. Let's create an environment where they don't have to focus on 
meetings, conference calls, raising money, etc. Let's find a way to let 
students come together. And we have.

Now, I am proud to announce that we have an Allo Messenger group that 
has 9 members in it, and we are growing. If you are a student in our 
wonderful state, or who will be attending school here soon, we encourage 
you to join. Please feel free to send me your contact information, and I 
will tell you how to become a member of our group.

Our goal is to work up to an official division, where we raise money, 
help with legislation, and all of the other exciting things that 
divisions do. But in order to get there, we must have students that 
care. We must have a group of people at the core who know each other, 
and are excited to work together. I believe that this is the best 
approach, and hope other state divisions who are building will follow 
our example.

In other news, we are planning our first student seminar in many years 
for October! I will send out updates when we have more concrete 
information.

Please spread the word about what we're doing to any students you know 
who can benefit from our projects.

Happy Friday!