[NFBC-SFV] August 2020 minutes of NFB.SFV Chapter meeting
Keith
kjcaballa1971 at gmail.com
Mon Aug 31 15:26:17 UTC 2020
Good morning. I was at the meeting. I did not see my name on top
Thank you
Keith J Caballa
Sent from my iPhone
> On Aug 30, 2020, at 3:50 PM, Biglang-Awa, Sheila via NFBC-SFV <nfbc-sfv at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>
>
> 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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