Hyderabad, just around the corner and fundraiser report!

Adventure Beyond the Horizon!

Our first fundraiser organized by Ability Beyond the Horizon was a success! It is however, important to define success correctly in this case :-) I definitely made some logistical errors, but it all turned out in the end. The event was so much fun, and I was lucky to have a lot of volunteers making it happen.

Woohoo!

To bring you quickly up to speed, the fundraiser was a field day event. The catch was, everyone had to be working with someone that was blindfolded through the activities or be blindfolded themselves. As you can imagine, people traded back and forth on the blindfolds, but both parts of the experience, I think, were equally as fun as you can see below.

Awesome structure built by Guardian Home Inspections and Repair

Limbo, so fun when you can't see the pole!

Dizzy Bat! I'm not sure I've laughed this hard in a while.

Our shirts came out great! Thanks to Full Press Apparel for the quick turn around on these. They made us shirts in less than a week's time! We received so many compliments about them. I had no idea the importance of a shirt for making an event "legit". We have some shirts left over as well if you are interested in purchasing one, they're $15, just get in touch and we'll get you clothed in our first ABH gear.

The shirt!

We made approximately $700 on the event after all of our expenses are accounted for. That's not bad at all! The attendance to the event was not great, but this is my fault for putting it on a Sunday. I totally neglected to factor the impact people going to church on Sunday morning would have on the event attendance. We also had it a little far out of town. I was warned about this, but the administration at Montford Middle School is so wonderful to work with, and they have such a nice space, I was hoping we could overcome it. It definitely played a role though. Other than that, the mistakes were close to none, and to be honest, it made for a really nice run without being overwhelmed with people. We plan to put this back on again in the fall, so if you missed it, you can make that one! If you want to see more photos of the event, head on over to our photos page! There are some really good ones taken by Michael Copeland of Copeland Productions, he's also the guy that did our great video on the front page. We love him a lot! There should be some video coming from him as well. I'll post it here when that happens!

India!

Ok, Hyderabad. We're so close, today marks exactly a month from when I expect to be getting off a plane in India. The plan is to begin work on July 2nd. It'll be me and Lauren Barr from last year. We had another volunteer all lined up and ready, but she wasn't able to make it unfortunately. This had a somewhat rippling effect in that people aren't able to get up the funding so quickly to make a trip to India. I've had awful luck with volunteers this year, I had another lined up very early, but again, couldn't make it due to finances. They've been great volunteers, but the economy and all that makes it difficult for people to pull this kind of money together. In the future, I hope that we as an organization can fully fund our volunteers, but its just not possible where we are now.

The plan is to work 3 weeks in Hyderabad, doing whatever we can in addition to giving some orientation and mobility training to teachers that work there so that they can teach their students greater independence. There's a group of parents that waits each day at Devnar School, and I'd like to work with them as well, teaching them concepts of the Expanded Core Curriculum and so forth. What would be great would be to tie them in with the parent group that is now functioning in Bangalore. Maybe Lauren can tackle that project.

After 3 weeks, Lauren and I are headed back to Bangalore to spend a week with our old friends from last year and finish up our trip. Part of the plan in Bangalore is to work with some other teachers in a 2-3 day workshop teaching some orientation and mobility skills as well as other areas of the expanded core curriculum. Going back to Bangalore is really critical because we'll be able to see what worked from last year, and what might need adjusting in the future. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone, I really enjoyed the folks at Enable India, what a great group of people.

Financials

Many people have asked how we're doing financially for the trip. As most of you following the blog know, this is an all volunteer organization. There are no salaries paid out anywhere. The money we raise currently goes entirely to supporting the trips we're making to help with visual impairment education globally. Right now, we can make the trip possible, but not entirely where I'd like to be. I have enough money to get the plane ticket and the visa, Devnar School has agreed to host Lauren and I, so that our lodging should be covered. Enough money means that we can make the trip happen, but I'll have to take the bank account back down to nearly nothing. For any of you in business, you realize this is not a good idea. So, I'm asking, if you are still interested in supporting our efforts, please lend some support. You can send a check to:

Ability Beyond the Horizon

5789 St. Joe Rd.

Tallahassee, FL 32311

 

Additionally, you can donate through the website and all that information is found here: http://www.abilitybeyondthehorizon.org/get-involved/

Regardless, we are going to India again! I'm so happy that we're able to do this 2 years in a row. My hope is to get this project funded with larger resources like grants in the future, and would welcome any ideas you have in that area.

Thank you so much for making this possible. You may never meet these kids, but I promise, they'll know of your kindness.

~Mickey

ps. if you are reading this blog, then that means you probably haven't signed up at the new website. It would help a lot if you could. Just go to: http://www.abilitybeyondthehorizon.org/blog/ and put in your email address. Super simple. Thanks!

Our first fundraiser, our new site, and upcoming trip to Hyderabad!

The New Website

Ever get to that point where there's literally just so much happening you don't know how to express it all? I'm there. Which is why this blog is kind of a long time coming, there's just a lot going on at one time. First things first. We have a new website, same address, TOTALLY different look. You can see the video on the front page that Michael Copeland put together of last year's trip. Thank you so much to Michael for the video and James Sowers for the help getting the new look up and running. It made my life much easier.

With the new site also comes a new blog. I'll continue to update the blogspot blog, but I would appreciate it if you'd go to the new site and subscribe to the blog again. Its much improved over the old method. You can get to the new blog subscription area by clicking: http://www.abilitybeyondthehorizon.org/blog/ on the right hand side you'll see a subscription box. Put your email in there, you'll get an email confirming, and that's it! Let me know what you think of the new look. Extra points if you find typos on the website, being my "inner circle" of readers, I'd appreciate the help with that!

Adventure Beyond the Horizon

On May 20th at 9am we'll be having our first fundraiser at Montford Middle School. Its called Adventure Beyond the Horizon. We'll have various activities that teams of two or more can do together. Here's the catch. Half of your team must be wearing a blindfold. There will be obstacles to navigate, fun field day activities to perform, and general fun and happiness to be had, all to support our upcoming trip to Hyderabad, India. Click here to register and learn more: http://www.abilitybeyondthehorizon.org/get-involved/adventure-beyond-the-horizon/

Need Business Sponsorship

We are also looking for business sponsorship for the event. $250 will get your logo on the T-shirt, and we'd love for your company to volunteer at a sponsored activity and of course run through the activities. The business can even create the activity, or we can work together to make one. You all can REALLY help us a lot by getting this word out to businesses that you do business with and let them know this is a cause you believe in. If you'd like me to talk with someone, call me at (850) 778-2110 or email mickey@abilitybeyondthehorizon and I'd love to tell them more.

Hyderabad!

In the month of July myself and Lauren Barr will be heading to Hyderabad. I'd love to have at least one more person to come with me, so if you have experience as an O&M instructor and as a Vision Teacher with an interest in international work, please get in touch and lets talk about possibilities. Like last year, we'll train new orientation and mobility instructors, as well as teach about the Expanded Core Curriculum, the overarching curriculum we use here in the US to prepare students with visual impairment to be successful in the world as adults. Also like in Bangalore, we'll be open to opportunities for further support and education. I can't wait to find out what those will be. So much of this work requires us to stay on our toes and open to possibility.

Its Time For Your Support

Get in touch if you'd like to help. We're about $3,000 shy of our goal to make this trip happen. We've already got a trip planned for next summer as well, Sierra Leone, so all money will be used. I'm not worried though, I know you all will come through in helping us to help others. We are a 501c3 charitable organization through the United States. This means that 100% of your donation is completely tax deductible, and literally 20 dollars make a big difference. You can donate through paypal and find out more by going to our Get Involved Page, checks can be made to Ability Beyond the Horizon and mailed to our treasurer at this address:

Ability Beyond the Horizon

c/o Eileen Bischof

2329 Limerick Dr

Tallahassee, FL 32309-3508

Checks are preferred because all the support goes to Ability Beyond the Horizon, rather than a small fee to Paypal first. Both ways are greatly appreciated!

Thanks for everything, even mentioning our work to others is an unbelievable help, please pass this post around to your friends and contacts. Lets make our first annual Adventure event a huge success. I look forward to hearing from you all.

From Devnar School for the Blind Website

~Mickey

 

Things afoot...

To follow up on the last post, we didn't exactly get a sponsor for our web costs, but we did get a few donations. So thank you very much, it helps a lot! With that in mind, I've been working with a new supporter of Ability Beyond the Horizon, James Sowers, who is helping me design a new website for the organization. This new site will allow me to update the content MUCH easier, and it looks pretty snazzy too. The downside to this, is that I will be moving the blog most likely, which means that you'll have to subscribe to a new blog. It shouldn't be too painful, and if you are reading this, you probably already did it once. I'm just worried we'll lose a lot of readers, but I hope, and feel that if you like reading our updates you'll take the couple minutes to resubscribe. That's not yet though, but soon.

I wanted to post the content of an email I received recently:

Hello Mickey, I would like to thank for all the books that we have received. I was out of station and when  returned I was really surprised to see the number of books in our library. It helps us to give the books to the hostel for the children to read at any time when they wish. Thank you very much. We pray for you and all the people who assist you. May God Bless you. With regards Sr.Clare Picture from Jyothi Seva's homepage                                                             This is just one of many emails I've received from India now thanking us for the braille books. Sister Clare is with Jyothi Seva  http://www.jyothiseva.ovh.org  a school I've spoken about before in the blog in Bangalore. They do really nice work with kids with visual impairments, but like many other schools and organizations in India they didn't have enough books to go around for the children to take to their rooms to enjoy. Due to the small number of available books, they were only able to allow a certain amount of time each day for each kid to have a chance to read them, and reading them in their room was not possible. This school was the original reason I imagined this idea, and it warms my heart to see that they arrived.  We've sent by our estimates over 1,000 books to India now. I'm not certain they've all arrived yet, but what an impact! Ability Beyond the Horizon really looks forward to continuing this program. Next stop for the books is Hyderabad, India. Please write me mickey@abilitybeyondthehorizon.org if you have some to send and I will send you the address. We're sending directly to India now through Free Matter for the Blind, rather than to me first as that just adds an unnecessary step to the process that eats up time. Speaking of Hyderabad, that is our intended destination this summer. Susan and Lauren have not been able to commit to doing their own location unfortunately, they're both trying to get their careers off the ground. So, one location again for ABH, which is kind of upsetting. I've found some volunteers to go with me, though I may look for one additional one once our plans for Hyderabad are more concrete. These new volunteers will have to commit to at least 2 summers of service, so that we can expand our operations and help more people with visual impairment. So, Hyderabad it is, the hottest food in India, my poor tummy... There are 480 kids with visual impairment in just this one school though,

http://www.devnarfoundationfortheblind.org/ so that is a lot of children that we can help. I will also be working with other teachers from other agencies and schools in Hyderabad while we are there. If the successes in Bangalore are any indication, Hyderabad should be really great.

Also, there are tentative plans for working in Sierra Leone in West Africa in 2013. I'm REALLY excited about this. They are on the recovering side a long civil war. The country is in shambles from what I understand from people that have been there. There are many many blind people because of the war. Our work is desperately needed. I would be trying to get there this summer, but because of the war, infrastructure is awful and finding a coordinator like the lovely Shanthala in Bangalore is difficult. There is a person that is volunteering this summer who is looking for a coordinator for us though, and we'll get there in 2013! As anyone that really knows me will tell you, I judge a lot of the value of a country by whether it has monkeys or not. If I am in a country that has resident primates of the non-human variety, I almost won't leave until I've seen one. Well friends, Sierra Leonne has 15 different types of primate, including the world famous Chimpanzee. As a bonus, they have African Elephants and hippos too, not to mention a huge diversity of bird life. We've got to go.

Well friends, that's all for now, the next time I post it will most likely be to tell you about our new web site, and give instructions for the new blog as well as final plans for Hyderabad. As always, I love hearing from you, please write me if you have any questions or ideas. We love your support!

~Mickey

Need sponsor for our web costs

Hello friends, it's time our site got a redesign. To do this properly so that I can maintain it myself without having to ask others to do the techy stuff, I'd like to change to a different host. I'll be moving the blog and everything over to a different set up. The cost to host the site with https://www.bluehost.com is $3.95 a month if you agree to 24 months, or $4.95 for 12 months. If you know anything about this stuff, that's a pretty good deal, and they work really well with Wordpress, which is good because the new site will be managed by wordpress.org, and will be built around our videos and pictures, with of course the blog.

So, my sales pitch is one cup of coffee a month worth of dollars donated to Ability Beyond the Horizon so we can continue to keep our presence out there in the world and get to kids with visual impairment.

Boys at the school for the blind we'll be working with this summer

We have the funds to make this happen, but I'd rather keep those funds for our summer work. With that in mind, it occurred to me that I could see if anyone in our family of support was interested in sponsoring us. Thanks for the consideration, please get in touch or donate at the site if you like http://www.abilitybeyondthehorizon.org/involvement.php your support, as always, is incredibly appreciated.

~Mickey

Look at all those books!!!

So, yesterday I got a call from the postal center here at FSU telling me that they had about 60-70 boxes of braille materials for me and wanted to know what I wanted to do with them. Wow! I had put a new address out there for shipping, but I guess it didn't actually get out there like I thought. So this morning Alison Bailey, and Brittany Stanley two students in the FSU visual disabilities program met me at the shipping center. I brought tape, Alison brought labels. Alison is actually the magic behind all the shipping so far. She's diligently gone in and relabeled boxes to head to Shanthala. Since Shanthala might be getting at capacity, please email me if you plan to ship boxes, and I might give you another address to send them to somewhere else in the world. Clearly there is a need, and a surplus of material here in the US to give. So please keep it up. Just get in touch at mickey@abilitybeyondthehorizon.org so that our efforts are the most effective.

There are about 60 boxes there, we estimate at least 500 books

~Mickey

The link to the video

Apparently many of the email programs wouldn't support embedded video. Note to self for next time. So, here's the link to the video http://vimeo.com/34098578 hopefully that'll work better for you all. Thanks for letting me know.

~Mickey

A short video of this Summer's work

Hello everyone, welcome to the New Year! We've recently had a video completed of our work this summer in India. I'd love for you to check it out, we'll be posting it to the website as soon as I can get all that worked out. A special thank you to Michael Copeland of www.copelandproductions.com for his tremendous work on this video, and the next video he's doing for us, as well as to Susan Yarbrough, Lauren Barr, and the team in India, especially Shanthala Somayaji. I hear from India at least once a week or so, and they are doing really awesome things there. I also would be remiss without thanking all of you for the support that made this happen. It wouldn't have, had you not believed in us, and given of yourselves in both time and money. I know both of those are very valuable resources.

We're also continuing to ship braille and large print books to India, and they are going over really well. If you've got any materials you'd like to send, please get in touch with me. We can ship them free of charge.

Here's that great video!





We're working hard to get placements arranged for this summer. Hyderabad is almost certain, and I'm looking into possibilities for another location as well. I'll keep you updated as we move forward. Thank you for your support, and I wish you all a wonderful 2012.

~Mickey