The way I acquired this job was an intriguing turn of events. The President of UCPGG, Barry Gardin, invited me to their office for a meeting. I was expecting to converse with him for an hour about my knowledge of AAC. I figured that since I was a consumer consultant with DynaVox he would probably ask me to do a presentation for UCP like the one I did for one of their Christmas parties. However, to my surprise, he offered me the blogger and grant writing position at that meeting and I gladly accepted his offer.         

Due to my increasing job duties at UCPGG I cannot continue writing for the Voice for Living. As a result this is my last blog for this website. I hope you all enjoyed reading my blog posts on here and I encourage you to read my UCPGG blog at http://ucpgg.org/home/lateefs-view-of-the-bay/. I thank you for your continued support.

So far I have been fortunate that I can balance all my life’s activities. I must balance working for DynaVox as a Consumer Consultant with being a commissioner on the Mayor’s Commission on People with Disabilities. Plus this summer I plan to intern with the World Institute of Disability as a blogger. I am also often busy on weekends participating in power soccer practicing and games with my team the Borp Bay Earthquakes; this past spring my team was busy preparing for the United States Power Soccer Association national tournament that took place in Indianapolis, Indiana in June.

Clearly I have to manage my time wisely to participate successfully in all I do. I must say I find myself sometimes frantic trying to accomplishing it all. However, I don’t think I would have my life any other way.

Our topic of conversation switched from attending college, to career goals, to romance and dating. One of the members of the group who was nineteen informed me that he was graduating high school next spring. When I asked him what his plans were after high school and he told me he planned to participate in social groups and pick up girls. I informed him that while I was in college I interacted with all kinds of people, including many girls my age, and was able to develop many friendships, some of which have lasted to this day. I also pointed out that college would help him decide what career he would like to pursue in the future. Hopefully my words will make him look at college in a new light. I really enjoyed my time at the AAC Leaders meeting and I hope I get to spend some time with them again and get to know all of them better.

For this production I was put in a group with a bunch of different artists with disabilities with different talents in a program entitled the Artist In Residency Program. Some were poets like me, one was a photographer, and another a sculptor. We put our minds together to figure out what sort of play we want to produce. Throughout the process I was excited to see the end result of what we come up with and I was sure that our audience would be delighted to see our theatric artist creation. I wrote two pieces for the play and they were crowd pleasers. Performed January 28th and 29^th at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, the piece was thrilling to experience!

Ever Widening Circle was held at the Oakland Marriott City Center’s Jewel Ball Room and was a very nice affair. A local news anchor Don Sanchez, the arts and entertainment reporter for ABC7 News, was the emcee for the night. I see him all the time on television and it was fun seeing him in person. During the event, the National Disability Leader’s Award was given to Anthony Coelho, a former member of the U.S. House of Representative with epilepsy, who authored the Americans with Disabilities Act. For entertainment they had a humorist, Greg Walloch, who told a relatively funny story of being stuck in a New York park in the middle of night while using crutches. Then after a brief intermission, Grammy nominated Maria Muldaur serenaded the crowd with some blues and jazz songs that delighted the audience.

During the intermission I was able to meet Katheen Barrett who was a retired representative of Telecommunications Access To The Deaf And Disabled Administrative Committee. This organization is involved with the program Speech-to-Speech created by Dr. Bob Segalman to assist people with speech disabilities to talk on the phone. She gave me her card and I e-mailed her a couple of days later. Hopefully I can network with her for future career opportunities – for my others and others with disabilities.

The BORP Revolution consists of four different bike rides: a ten mile ride, a twenty-five mile ride, a fifty mile ride, and a hundred mile ride. Anyone can sign up to raise money and participate in the ride. BORP provides bikes specifically built for people with disabilities to ride and I usually have a good time getting on one of those bikes and riding through the Napa Valley. This year I signed up to do the twenty-five mile bike ride, but I did not train before the event and as a result I listened to one of the organizer’s advice and did the ten-mile bike ride instead. When I got to Graton, California, the place where the ten mile bike ride was being held, a bike was there waiting for me. I had a good start on the bike and was going at a good pace. However, I developed a painful cramp in my hip and had to turn back halfway. Hopefully, I can try to complete the route next year though.           

After the race, participants went to the Trentadue Winery for some good food and relaxation. They had excellent catered food and even masseuses to massage people after their bike rides. I definitely helped myself to a massage after my ordeal with my cramped hip. The BORP has this Revolution annually and I highly recommend people to participate.  Check out BORP’s site (http://www.borp.org/) throughout the year for information about the 2011 event as it becomes available. Maybe I will even see some of you at this year’s BORP Revolution next October.

I was most interested in how he was able to establish his professional career. Like me he had the opportunity to attend college, graduating from George Washington University. During college he obtained an internship for the Senate Subcommittee on the Handicapped as an editor for its newsletter. Upon graduating he was able to get a position as a court monitor for overseeing the closure of Fort Haven, the District of Columbia’s institution for adults and children with developmental disabilities. I am also trying to jump start my career with my WID internship. Who knows, maybe in a few years young adults who use AAC might be contacting me, requesting interviews and asking how I formed a successful career.

Working from home has its benefits and drawbacks. It is good because you can set your own schedule and the pace in which you work. However, the convenience and comforts of home can be a distraction in getting work done. I disciplined myself to get my tasks done in a timely manner, especially having three entities requesting work sometimes at the same time. This way I usually do not get overwhelmed with all that I have to do.

When I came into the UCP office, I met Barry along with the receptionist, Karen Glatze. We got right down to business and Barry started to tell me about the project he was working on with Maggie Mahoney, a co-worker of mine from DynaVox, on an AAC training facility. It turns out that they were looking for a grant writer to help garner funds for the center and they wanted to hire me for the position – especially after Maggie informed Barry about the great work we have done together. As awestruck as I was by the turn of events I was fortunate that my astonishment did not show on my face. It totally took me by surprise but I was thankful to be hired. Even though I do not have much experience writing grants, I jumped at the chance to be apart of the project.

What this episode taught me is to always be prepared for opportunities when they arise. Working with UCP was totally unexpected, but the hard work I did for DynaVox paid off with good references and UCP sought me out for this new position. Now I have a job working on acquiring funds for an AAC training center, which I am excited to be a part of.

I was invited to the event by my friend and community organizer, Jessica Lehman. She was one of the main organizers of the march and when I got there she was being interviewed by the local TV news media about the event. People with disabilities were holding signs and papers with protest chants expressing their displeasure with the cuts. Soon after I arrived a protest rally started up with people going up to the mike and speaking about how horrid these cuts were. I could clearly hear the sense of urgency in their voices; for some people with disabilities without SSI they could not employ their PCA’s anymore and would have to live in nursing homes. As a person who highly values my independence I totally empathize with people’s fears of the cutting of services. 

After the rally we marched around downtown Sacramento. We were shouting our protest chants and holding up our signs as we walked down the street. A few bystanders were looking at us, but I don’t think they knew what was going on. We were officially only supposed to march a few blocks from the Capitol building and back. However, when we were crossing the last street to go back to the Capitol some of our compatriots stopped in the middle of the street and blocked the one-way intersection. This planned act of civil disobedience was to expose to the public the critical situation these cuts put the disability community in. Soon about fifty police swarmed the area and eventually arrested everyone on the street giving them each a citation. The observers must have thought it was weird to see a bunch of people with disabilities get arrested. I hope those observers and the observers in the Capitol building also received the message that the disability community means business about making sure we keep our SSI.