[NFBC-SFV] August 2020 minutes of NFB.SFV Chapter meeting

Sun Aug 30 22:48:32 UTC 2020

Hi everyone. Happy Sunday!

Below is the August minutes of our Chapter meeting. Please feel free to let
me know if there are any corrections and/or  additions that I might have
missed. 

Thank you. 

August, 2020 Chapter meeting 

National Federation of the Blind of California

San Fernando Valley Chapter 

The meeting was called to order at 10:04 am. We began with the Pledge of
Allegiance, the NFB Pledge and the 1 minute message. 

Trivia for the day: What would you take with you if you were going to the
beach?

In attendance: 26 total attendees. 

24 members and 2 guests.

Rochelle Yohai, Sharon Watson, Jane Suh,  Robert Stigile - Chapter
President, Joy Stigile, Jo Anne Seaman, Joe OToole, Lynne Nishihara, Portia
Mason, Malik - Treasurer, Candace Luther, Jose Lomeli, Lindsay Kerr, Ron
Hilliard - Member-At-Large, Juanita Herrera - Vice President, Betsy Estrada,
Karen Elo, David and Valerie Delawder, Catherine Bliss, Sheila Biglang-awa -
Secretary, John and Nancy Albarran. 

Guest - Autumn shearer, Lorena Garcia 

Announcements:

David announced that he has an Orcam that he's selling. Please contact him
later if you are interested.

Jo Anne shared that she had enjoyed her first NFB convention by phone. She
learned a lot about Houston. She heard a lot of nice people on the phone.

Robert announced the California Association of Guide Dog  Users (CAGDU) will
be  having a social call this afternoon at 4 pm on Zoom. Text or call him
after the meeting if you need the Zoom info. 

Secretary Report

Juanita made the motion to approve the July minutes as sent. Seconded by
Rochelle and the motion carries. 

Treasury Report

Malik will send a copy  in the list serve later.

Beginning balance: $5,742.77

Withdraw: $50 for PAC Plan 

Ending balance: $5,692.77  

Robert explained the PAC plan to the newcomers. Please contact him for more
info.  

And for those who may not know, the National federation of the Blind is
organized on the National level which our headquarters is in Baltimore,
Maryland. Our facility is about 2 blocks now and 4 stories tall. That's
where our National President resides and a lot of the staff that works at
the  National Center. Every State has an Affiliate and Affiliate President.
Many States has a lot of local Chapters and Divisions on the State level.  

typically each month, our National President records a release that he sends
out. This month he elected to record it. Robert will talk about a few things
that are important. Our National President had decided after this month in
September until the end of this year, the Presidential Release will be live
at 8 pm on the first day of the month. It is a  Zoom call, so people will
need to go on the Zoom platform. So, for next month it will be live on
September 1st at 8 pm Eastern time and 5 pm our time. The Zoom information
will be sent out on the last week of August.   

The other thing that he mentioned on his Presidential Release is, the fact
that October is "Meet the Blind" month. This has been a program that they've
worked on for 30 years or more in the NFB. Basically, it is a way of raising
awareness in the community to say that blind people are capable of working,
getting out and doing things. This is a way in showing the public that we
are a part of this society.  We haven't done anything in quite a few years,
so Robert would like us to think in the next months, if we could do an
online that might be able us to go out in the virtual community. It will be
great if we could put our thinking  hats  together.

The next item that President Riccobono mentioned is that , if anyone who
shops at Wallmart, they have the -check out  stand that you can put your
groceries on and let it go through the belt and it tells you the prices of
your items. It will tell you to swipe your credit card  and then check out.
Apparently, according to him it is not accessible. They have filed a lawsuit
in Baltimore Maryland, against the Wallmart chain to make this check out
stands accessible. They need people who shops at Wallmart, who would like
to be a part of it and who are not from Baltimore. So, if you are
interested, you would need to call the National Office next week. The phone
number is 410-659-9314 and dial in the extension 2440. This would put you to
Valerie Yngling, one of the Attorneys of the National Federation of the
Blind. Let her know that you are interested to be a part of the Walmart
lawsuit. 

The next item on the Presidential Release is, if you are unemployed and have
had  difficulty with filing for  benefits, Robert wants to let you know that
it is not accessible. If you had these problems, you could go to the NFB
website and fill out the survey for unemployment benefits. The link for the
survey is NFB.org/legal and under that page  you will find the survey.

The next part is the legislation. There are 2 bills that our  National
Office would like us to give support on. The first one is called Sammy's
law. This is HR4686. This bill has already pass on  the House and its on to
the Senate. We are being asked to call and encourage our Senators to pass
the bill.               What this is, is a way to make ride sharing safer
and also  to make the ride share apps  more accessible. Basically, just call
in our Senators and ask them to pass the bill and we want their support. 

The 2nd bill is "Safe to Work Act" and it is S4613. Basically, what had
happened with this is, is that the titles 1 and 3 of the  American
Disability Act  would be eliminated.  If this bill would pass, this would
mean work protections for people with disabilities will be eliminated and we
don't want that. So, we should call our Senators and ask them to make sure
that the critical protection establish in Titles 1 and 3 of the ADA are
protected and they amend this bill so they can take out the harmful language
of not to protect us from being employed.  With any question and the
Senators numbers, please call Robert. 

State Convention 

State Convention in California will be on the weekend of October 22nd
through the 25th. Registration forms will be out within next week.
Registration will be the same way with the National convention. It will be
free with the option if you wish to make a donation for expenses. Keep in
mind that we do have expenses for both convention  for the Zoom flatform as
well as other expenses such as the Bell Program (Braille  Enrichment for
Learning and Literacy) and other  expenses that we've been taking care of
when we have legislation and many other expenses that we take on during the
year.

The next item that Robert had mentioned are door prizes. He first talk about
providing  door prizes. He gave an example of going to Amazon and he would
find  a door prize that he would like to provide and chose a $25 Starbucks
gift card. You would then  find the link to that card up on the top on the
address  bar. It will give you a full link for purchasing that card. You
would copy that to your clipboard whether you're using a phone or computer.
So you want to copy that link. Then you go to the form  that we have created
which will be available next week. You will fill out this form and it will
ask your name, address, phone number, email address and then it would ask
you for the link of the door prize/s that you are wanting to provide. You
would paste the link that you copied in Amazon into that field. Then you
would go to the next  page for your payment, either through PayPal account
or a credit card info. You would then submit that to  the NFB of California
PayPal. Once the item has been paid for, the link that you copied and pasted
into the form will be sent to the Door prize Chair. Then PayPal would add
12% on top of that door prize that you are wanting to Provide. The 12%is for
tax and fees that PayPal would typically take out when a transaction comes
through.  Then at the convention, when they call someone's name as a winner.
Then this winner would have 30 minutes to call in to a particular phone
number to let them know that you won that prize. After the convention is
over, the Affiliate will then take the funds in the PayPal account and will
purchase the sample given  Starbucks gift card and have it shipped to the
winner. 

The next item for the State convention is the auction baskets. What we would
do is we would pick a theme, for instance technology. Then Chapter members
will get technology items like an Apple iTunes gift card, an inexpensive
Bluetooth speaker and etc. We would put all those given items in a basket
and we'll take it to the State convention. Then the person in-charge of  the
basket would auction those baskets off. There will be a time  at the
convention that the auctioneer will get up and announce each basket and say
all the items. The bid will start at $25 and people will bid until  there
will be no more offered bid. Whoever wins the basket pays their money. Then
the money will go to the  State Affiliate. This is a way for all the
different Chapters in California helping the Affiliate raise funds. So, we
can do that again and Robert would like the Chapter to consider a auction
theme. 

We would be creating a web page form soon.  What Robert would suggest is
that we would go find items   at  Amazon  that we want to put in the auction
basket. We would create a list. Once created, we would go to the web page
form and fill it out. We would let the auction person, who is going to be
Michael Richardson,  know what are auction basket theme is and the items on
the list. Now, some details are still being worked out and Robert will let
us know the answers soon. 

So, he asked the members for any suggestions.  Joe suggested "Pandemic
Survival basket". Juanita suggested "Fun on the sun basket". Candace
suggested a combination of Joe's and Juanita's idea.                  

Robert discussed fundraising. We still want to consider doing somethings for
fundraising that can be done online. If anyone has any ideas of what we
could do virtually, please let us know. Joy have 2 ideas that are both
virtual. One is the Tupperware party and the other one is Pampered  Chef
party.   Juanita  suggested the popcorn on sale online where we could sell
big bags of different flavored popcorn. We sell it and we get to keep a
certain percentage. She'll look into it for the details. 

Robert also discussed about the 50/50 raffle.  We could do something like
they did for the Jernigan raffle at the National Convention were they called
it as "Give 20". If anyone has any ideas to please think about that and let
Robert know. 

Lastly, Robert would like to get input from everyone who attended  the
National convention that has the largest gathering of blind people. It has
nearly 10,000 people that attended. Since the convention was great, he would
like to hear from the members who attended on what your thoughts,
experiences and what you got out of it. So, Candace, Keith, David, Joy and
Juanita shared their experiences. 

Joe made a motion to have Autumn and Lorena join as new members, seconded by
Malik and the motion carries. 

Juanita made a motion to adjourn the meeting, seconded by Ron. The meeting
was adjourn at 11:30 am. 

Respectfully submitted by:

Sheila Marie B.C. 

Cell: 818-404-7646

Chapter Secretary and 

Chair of Fundraising

NFB.SFV   

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