Accomplishments from the past month:
- We the area 72 accessibility committee had our first quarterly of the panel 75 rotation. It we held on Jan. 18 via hybrid from the Puget Sound Central Service Office (CSO) in Tacoma. It lasted a few minutes over 3 hours. We introduced ourselves and our experience with accessibility committee work. I am proud to say we have a wonderful group of chairs and liaisons from all over the area.
- We have an excel spreadsheet with the district contact information for each district up to date. We have 16 accessibility chairs/liaisons/DCM’s connected together out of the 44 districts.
- I have secured a guest speaker for the April Quarterly. Mr. Glen C. from district 45. He has several service animals that share their lives with him. He will be attending in person at the district that secures a location to host our April Quarterly and sharing his experience with AA and service animals. Barriers to the access of facilities, do all members make them feel safe and welcome in meetings? and at service commitments. What other barriers does he have to work through on his own that we can help with?
Problems or issues you are facing or have already dealt with:
- No problems at all. The handoff from Thomas was wonderful and we hit the ground running.
- I did not learn ahead of time how the area zoom account worked for me and was terrified the night before that I would show up at the CSO and not be able to connect and host the zoom. But I got lucky, I remembered how the CSO chair, Meggin K. smiled at me when I was trying to log into the zoom as DCM of District 9 this last fall and she told me to select meeting, login with Google, and follow the prompts. I did this with the area accessibility login and was able to host the zoom. Everything went smoothly.
- We have 16 of 44 districts in the loop with us. More would have been great.
Please share some goals you hope to achieve or begin work on in the next month.
- With the help of District DCM’s, we hope to bring more accessibility chairs/liaisons into the fold. I hope to have 35 districts attend our next quarterly on Saturday April 19th, 10am – 2pm.
- I hope to have districts offer to host the April quarterly and July quarterly in their districts. The only requirement is hybrid capability. We have a district for each quarterly going back to their districts to ask for approval to host the upcoming quarterlies.
- I want to reach out to all the DCM’s of the districts that do not as of yet have representation at our accessibility quarterly and see what I can do to help them secure a person to help out.
What am I grateful for?
- Mike P. and Sandy from D45, the work they are going to do with the Puget Sound Accessibility Committee, wanting to see how we can reach out to the elderly community.
- Michelle C. with dist. 42 and the work she is going to put into ASL needs
- Peter with dist. 41 and his interest in ASL needs
- Whealon C. with dist. 40 and her share about how a group chose to stop clapping and use “jazz hands” at a meeting to help a member that is sensitive to quick loud noises.
- Mike the DCM with dist. 36 who wants to reach out to the Spanish speaking residents of his district.
- Todd the chair of dist. 35 and his interest and experience in working in hospitals and institutions.
- Bobbie the chair of dist. 34 and her interest in Spanish interpretation at meetings, proud to have Angle as the DCM this rotation.
- Ty the chair from Dist. 29 and his desire to step up to a service position that needed filling and his desire to learn and get up to speed.
- Andrew from dist. 28 and his share about the ride sharing organization that his district practices
- Rita from dist. 24 and her share about a website for the deaf community and donations to the intergroup ASL funds.
- Lisa the DCM from dist. 21, thank you for stepping into the role for this quarterly, you are a wonderful DCM, I hope to see who you get to fill the accessibility chair role for the next two years.
- Matt from Dist. 16 and your desire to get out into your district and find the groups that are not participating in general service, show them how to get plugged in.
- Craig C. from dist. 11 thank you for your share about reaching out to the “unhoused
community - Mary S. from dist. 9, thank you for your participation, you walked into the room early and shared toward the end of the meeting that from listening to all the others share you have an idea of what accessibility committees do and expressed your gratitude for being on the committee with us.
- Aarin R. thank you for your participation and time as a interested member from dist. 25, I hope you reach out to me soon with news that you are the chair accessibility chair for dist. 25 for the next two years.
