Today at ACB Mid Year Meetings

Hello Everyone:

Well, today was the first day of the ACB President's meeting. It started at
11 a.m. this morning. After some opening remarks by President Mitch
Pomerantz, where among other things he remembered fondly Pat Beattie who was
a long time member and legislative advocate in ACB, we had introductions.

We have 40 state ACB Affiliates and I believe seven special interest
affiliates represented. We had an update on some of ACBs fundraising
projects. ACB is, again, selling raffle tickets to benefit our monthly
publication, the Braille Forum. Tickets will cost $50 each. First prize is
$5,000, second is $1,000 and third is $500. ACB is again going to do the
walk-a-thon this year Saturday, July 10 during our convention in Phoenix,
Arizona. We will be walking in an air-conditioned mall in Tempe, Arizona,
about 17 miles from the convention hotel. You can sign up for the walk, at
$25 for your entry fee. You can sign up on-line at a website which is not
yet completely on line but should be in a week or so. That website is
www.acbwalk.com.

We then had lunch, and began what we spent most of our day on, training on
how to proactively advocate for Schools for the Blind. Dr. Michael Bina,
President of the Maryland School for the Blind was our luncheon speaker. He
stressed how important it is to advocate and be proactive with our schools.
He gave us several dos and don'ts that I can't remember right now so will
have to listen to the archives for.

After that, we had a panel of several individuals talking about the
importance of advocating and building relationships with the school for the
blind. Melanie Brunson, AC B's Executive Director, spoke on the Federal
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and how we can use its language
in helping advocate for schools for the blind. We concluded with some
remarks by ACB's First Vice President, Kim Charlson and an open forum
discussion.

The training went super well and I couldn't be prouder of the Schools for
the Blind Task Force Members and others who made it happen.

We next discussed how ACB affiliates can make better use of ACB Radio and
its programming to stream, archive and make available our events to more
people. We also discussed that you really don't need that much equipment or
technical knowledge to stream a program.

We next heard an update on plans for the 2010 ACB convention in Phoenix.
This is going to be a fun convention in a hot city. Our afternoon concluded
by discussing the importance of all ACB affiliates adopting conflict of
interest and confidentiality policies, and a discussion of the various 990
tax forms our organizations may have to file based on total gross receipts
and total assets.

We'll be back at it tomorrow. If you want to listen in, go to
www.acbradio.org/world at around 7:45 a.m. central time.