[Nebraska-Senior-Blind] March, 2020, Secretary's Report Attached and Pasted in

[Linda Mentink]

Hello All,

I hope this finds you all well.

Please find pasted in and attached the report for our March meeting. 
I'm sorry this is so late. Stacy's presentation was loaded with good 
information, so it took me a while to listen to the recording and 
write it all up. I hope it's not too much information.

Talk to you all tonight.

Blessings,

Linda Mentink



NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND OF NEBRASKA SENIOR DIVISION SECRETARY's REPORT



Monday, March 9, 2020



The NFBN Senior Division met by telephone conference Monday, March 9, 
2020. In President Robert Newman's absence, Vice President Barbara 
Loos called the meeting to order at 7:00 PM CDT. Members present 
were: Vice President Barbara Loos, Secretary Linda Mentink, Treasurer 
Cheryl Livingston, Board Member Nancy Oltman, Christine Boone, Jo 
Boshart, Geralyn Konruff, Brad Loos, Steve Senteney, and Jerry 
Whitlow. Guests present were: Stacy Cervenka from New York and Karen 
Walsh from Nebraska.



Stacy Cervenka, Director of Public Policy for the American Foundation 
for the Blind (AFB), was our guest speaker. AFB was founded in 1921, 
and they did a large number of things, including providing materials 
to professionals in the blindness field, producing books on tape and 
offering aids and appliances to blind people themselves. In the past 
five years the organization has done some real strategic imagining, 
and now they're more of a think tank. They focus on research that 
organizations can use when they're doing advocacy. Their primary 
focus areas right now are education, employment, older adults with 
vision loss, transportation and technology. She talked about their 
aging initiatives. They did an environmental scan, and decided that 
they could make the most impact in transportation and employment. The 
first big thing that they're doing is Project Visitor, which is a 
grant that was given to them by the Volkswagen Foundation. They're 
trying to learn about what transportation options are available to 
older people with vision loss and if these transportation modes are 
adequate, how people feel about them, if people feel like they're 
useful and feasible, and if they support them in living independently 
in their homes and communities. Last year they conducted several 
hundred onlline surveys with professionals who provide services to 
blind seniors. This year they are conducting hundreds of phone 
interviews with blind seniors themselves in urban, suburban, 
ex-urban, rural, and remote areas to get a full picture of what 
services they are aware of and what services professionals who serve 
them are aware of. When this is all done, they will be publishing the 
presentation in JVIB, posting it on several websites, such as the 
Volkswagen Group of America, Mobility as a Service Team, Engineering 
and Innovation California, and delivering it at a number of aging 
conferences and blindness conferences. They have learned that 86% of 
older adults are more afraid of entering a nursing home than they are 
of death because they don't want to give up their independence or 
their autonomy. Vision loss is one of the main reasons they enter 
nursing homes. AFB is now doing some transportation advocacy, mainly 
to change the paratransit regulations to allow for people to be able 
to make one stop of up to 15 minutes in duration, rather than waiting 
for 90 minutes to be picked up for their return trip. This will be 
introduced in the Disability Access to Transportation Act. They were 
not able to get it as a regulations change at this point, but as a 
two-year pilot program for 15 cities, five cities with 200,000 people 
or more, five cities of with 200,000 people or less and five cities 
that are in very remote areas. AFB has just founded a blindness 
transportation working group of the policy teams of the NFB, ACB and 
AFB with these goals: staying out of each other's lane and not 
counting on the same donors, support each other's work and identify 
some areas where we can all pull together in the same direction.



Regarding employment, they did a mapping of the disability employment 
space, all the employment programs that are geared to blind people or 
cross disabilities; they only focused on programs that people who are 
blind could apply for. They divided them into nine categories, 
looking for gaps, and noticed that there is no significant outreach 
to older adults who want to remain in the work force. They also talk 
a lot about the elimination of the homemaker goal in vocational 
rehabilitation, meaning that, unless a person has a vocational goal, 
they cannot get VR services. Stacy would like to start seeing is that 
people over the age of 55 who don't have vocational goals can still 
receive VR services. She would like to see more funding for older 
individuals who are blind, but we need to think about alternative 
ways to fund training for older people who are blind.



They are also conducting focus groups in a hospital in Huntington, 
West Virginia, with staff and sixteen blind and low vision patients. 
They are coming up with a report about what the issues are that blind 
people face when in the hospital and how blind people's access to and 
quality of medical care can be improved. Materials will be 
disseminated to hospitals about best practices and how to work with 
blind and low vision people. They are embarking on designing a 
research study on transportation for older adults with vision loss, 
focusing on people age 65 and up. The first phase will focus on 
gathering information about communities and the second phase will 
gather information from older people with vision loss who do not 
drive, older people who do not have vision loss, but who do not drive 
for other reasons and older people who do drive.



Stacy then told us about her website, blindtravelersnetwork.org. In 
2018 she won a Holeman prize from the San Fransisco Lighthouse for 
the Blind and visually Impaired. she wanted to create a travel 
website specifically for blind people. There are three main areas: 
blogs, review forms and message boards. She encouraged us to use it 
and share it with our friends.



Linda recited the NFB Pledge. Robert will recite it next month.



Linda read the February, 2020, Secretary's Report. It will be made a 
part of the permanent record of the organization.



Steve shared that he got a new phone and earphones, and he is hearing 
the meeting much better.



Cheryl read the Treasurer's Report as follows:



Treasurer's Report Senior Division



Monday, March 9, 2020



Beginning Balance $1164.83



Expenses



PAC for March $15.00



Deposits none



Ending Balance $1149.83



Respectfully submitted,



Cheryl Livingston, Treasurer



Note: Gina Finnell and Jolene Boshart paid dues which will be 
reported in the April report.



It will be made a part of the financial record of the organization.



OLD BUSINESS. Barbara reported that they are making progress on the 
coffee video. They've been having several meetings and writing 
revisions, and are getting closer to the place where they will 
contact the camera guy.



Linda mentioned that she's considering playing our February guest 
speaker's presentation for the Columbus Area Chapter, because five of 
the nine members are dealing with vision loss.



BRAGS AND DRAGS. Barbara mentioned that it's a drag that Gina is sick 
and a drag that Robert's friend died.



Jerry's drag is that her doctor said she couldn't put her second 
hearing aid back in yet. She goes back to see him in a month. Her 
brag is that she has learned to read Braille. She's been practicing 
with a deck of cards and hopes before too long to be able to sit down 
and play a game of cards with her family, which she hasn't been able 
to do since she lost her sight.



Cheryl has fourteen more days before retiring from the Commission.



Jo has not been able to play for her month at church since her brain 
bleed last August. She is playing in March, and it's going really well.



Nancy asked Barbara how she's doing with her new computer. She's 
doing OK,. She finds some things confusing, and she's not always sure 
whether it's JAWS 2020, Google Chrome or Windows 10 that's the issue; 
but she's glad she made the switch. Things work more quickly and her 
email is synced to her



iPhone and her computer.



There was no further business, so the meeting adjourned at 8:41 PM.



Respectfully submitted,



Linda Mentink, Secretary
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