[Nfbf-l] energizing and running the chapter smoothly

[TaraPrakash]

Hello all and David. This is in response to a David's mail in which he asked 
the following questions:

What is your chapter doing to keep the chapter energized, what is your 
chapter working on, and out of all your members how many actually attend the 
meetings?

 I hope the below mail will be useful to some other listers too. I will be 
grateful if someone adds more strategies to make a chapter run smoothly. The 
state does conduct regular telephone conferences to take care of some of 
such concerns, so I would advise to remain tuned in for announcements about 
them, and attend them.


The below information is about the Greater Orlando chapter. This chapter is 
blessed by some very active members and leaders in the field of blindness.


We keep in touch with our elected and prospective representatives at the 
county, City and state level and sometimes they join our meetings to answer 
the concerns of the members. These concerns are not restricted to the issues 
strictly about blindness, we recently called an expert to talk about 
hurricane preparation. This encourages the members to remain in touch.

Those members who can't afford to join meetings due to financial problems, 
are helped by our chapter pay for the transport and meal charges, if they 
ask for it.
We meet on the second Saturday of each month between 12 and 2 p.m. to ensure 
that people attend and have a good time and a good lunch.

Every meeting we have 2 lucky draws: 1 is called the lucky egg and the other 
50-50. members have to give 50 cents for the lucky egg. All the members 
whether they are present or not are included in the draw. If somebody absent 
for the meeting wins, the money is kept for the next meeting. So it becomes 
more profitable to win in the next meeting as the money accumulates.

For 50-50, in which the participation is optional, the members buy raffle 
tickets for 50 cents each. You can buy more tickets to increase your chance 
of winning. If a ticket with your number on it is drawn, you get to keep 
half of the total money collected that day, the other half goes to the 
chapter. Such activities help the chapter contribute to the activities 
conducted at the local, state  and national level.

For generating more resources, we sometimes have raffle drawing for the 
products that are attractive to both blind and sighted alike. You can think 
of net books, IPhone, ITouch etc.

Our chapter also offers 2 scholarships to the deserving students. This year 
on, we are planning to reserve some points for the active members. This 
hopefully will draw more students' participation.

We believe that success of any  organization is 2 way process. The 
relationship between the executive and members is not restricted to 1 
monthly meeting only. Our president Dwight Sayer and other board members are 
very approachable, friendly and caring. Members do not hesitate to approach 
them with their concerns and they do not have to be organization related. If 
they can't help you with something, they generally will have another 
pperson's contact details who can help.

There are people who are disabled but do not strongly feel about the need 
for constant struggle to make ourselves relevant and bring our issues to the 
forefront. We keep in regular touch with organizations that working towards 
social welfare in general. If the organizations work with Red Cross and YMCA 
and contribute to their activities we can expect a very productive 
reciprocation. You will be glad to know that our chapter has decided to help 
a school for the blind in Jamaica and we are regularly sending useful 
goodies to them. Such activities have brought us a lot of members who are 
not blind or who have no other physical impairments.



Hope that helps a bit.



Tara