Editor’s Note: Richie is completing his second year as NFB Austin President. Here is what he has to say about the 2011 Austin Federation work:

With the blessing of our chapter members I was honored to be re-elected to serve as your Chapter President in January 2011. I will tell you from the bottom of my heart that it has been quite the experience. I have learned, listened, and grown to love the beautiful thing that we become when we gather each month. We should be proud of our accomplishments, acknowledge our needs for improvement, and keep marching together toward future successes.

In 2011, this chapter participated in a number of good deeds promoting the good news of blindness to the Austin area. We began by electing a diverse, intelligent, capable, respectable, and hard working board of directors. I thank my colleagues on the board for their help this year. These leaders in the Austin blind movement have represented us as professionals and experts in blindness. I thank Pamela, Janine, Heather, Thomas, Mike, and Angela. Because of you, this chapter continues to succeed. Because of you, I will continue to succeed as a leader in this movement.

We held true to our focus on Youth Initiatives by supporting a High School senior; Krista Akridge of the Texas School for the Blind, to experience the Blind Driver Challenge and the National Association of Blind Student Washington Seminar. With the NFB of Austin financial assistance and mentorship, Krista experienced first-hand the empowering drive, innovation, and voice of the Federation. The investment the NFB of Austin made on Ms. Akridge proved to be worth the expense. This young woman then attended her first National convention in Orlando, and is considering an NFB training center for her rehabilitation. Continuing the spirit of Youth Programming the NFB of Austin hosted its first ever BELL Camp for Blind Children. Together we celebrated the independence of blind people through fun activities in Braille, blindness lessons, and adjustment. Eight students had fun with the NFB of Austin mentors at BELL 2011. We continued to give back to the blind community by sponsoring a Diabetic Awareness March, wrapping gifts for Barns and Noble patrons each holiday season-showing the world what blind people can do, reading Braille to sighted students at the Campfire After School Program, sponsoring and participating in Austin’s White Cane Day celebration, enlightening the Daily Local Newspaper and interested community of the independence and legislative initiatives of the blind, and hosting social gatherings outside our business meetings at local restaurants and member’s homes.

We have expanded our presence on the web thanks to our members and our awesome web master. Thomas Stivers a long time friend of mine has found his nitch in our band. Please join us to celebrate our accomplishments, plans, and federationism at: www.nfbaustin.org. This site makes the Austin blind movement accessible and informative to all. Because of our presence on the web I have received many calls, we gained new members, and our current membership is enjoying this new innovative outlet in furthering our communication with each other and the World Wide Web. Our web page includes: information about blindness relative to Austinites and across the country. The web site continues to promote the calendar of events, meeting podcast, and a message board blogging feature for members. This year we added Blind Insight: our monthly publication written by our members that emphasize the good news of the blind. In addition, we now have philosophy, announcements, Braille awareness, cool pictures, video footage, and much more on our awesome web site. Thomas continues to help us with the call out service that takes a 30-second message, and will call out to all the members on our list.

The Chapter benefited from over 3000 dollars of fund raising efforts. These were represented by a few dances with Dinner’s in the Dark Blind Café events, Holiday Auction, Bake Sales, convention hospitality massages, convention King Size Candy Sale, BELL Camp Registration Fees, and donations. Jane Lansaw and Heather Stivers and their tireless effort organizing the Barns and Noble gift wrapping opportunity also should be recognized for contributing to our finances.

The NFB of Austin has accomplished the networking aspect to our community involvement. We have invited the community to meet the blind on many occasions this year. Our chapter has reached out to community partners such as: The Camp Fire Project-after school program for elementary children, Austin Statesmen-the local newspaper, a summer music camp for elementary aged children, AISD and UT Music Graduate Student Teachers for our BELL Program PE, music, and Art classes, and a private inventor interested in developing blind technology. NFB Austin will continue to broaden our horizons by networking, learning, and shaking hands with community partners.

Finally, we have grown in leadership and membership. The members list of the NFB of Austin has surpassed 100 contacts. We welcome Marcy Gonzalez who has helped our Board of Directors in local projects like: state convention logistics, establishing a presence for a Diabetic Action Network for NFB of Texas, assisting in BELL Camp 2011, and the Dinner in the Dark. We are blessed to have found hard workers such as John Franks, Travis Weed, Taryn Schriewer, Max Nguyen, and Oumar Diallo who have all stepped up this year to help with our chapter projects, events, and fundraisers.

There are a number of areas of improvement in which I hope we work on. First, our voice for the Austin blind needs to raise in volume. As President I have come in contact with agencies of the blind, blind persons themselves, and sighted people that have miss-information about what the NFB really is about. This only means that we aren’t educating the public enough about who we are, where we came from, and where we are going. This begins and ends with a sound philosophy, that in my opinion this chapter can work on establishing. Let’s find our voice, tune it up, and scream the good words, works, and wisdom regarding blindness.

Secondly, because our membership has grown, the chapter needs to find places for everyone. The Austin Chapter membership participation outside of showing up to a meeting has progressed some, but still can use some tuning up. Perhaps this is the fault of your board of directors, it could also be that our membership is unaware of the work that is needed, in fact, I believe it’s a little of both. This needs to change. This is a member’s movement, and we cannot promote our cause without the contributions, voices, strengths, and talents of everyone. Let’s all find a job in this chapter and fit in to this affiliate. Find a job that you enjoy, and take satisfaction from. If you don’t know what to do, ask someone who might have an idea, be open to that idea and give it your best shot.

Lastly, this chapter can work on follow through with the responsibilities it has committed too. The Board of Directors had many dreams our first meeting back in February. I know that we tried many new things, and we learned from each project. I feel with a re-evaluation of our unified philosophy, group participation, and individual commitments we can change what it means to be blind in Austin. I thank you for the opportunity to lead this chapter, and I hope I have represented you well. To next year federationists.