June 2003                                                                      

Presenting the Paula LeDuc Leadership Society

Paula LeDuc (left), our first living skills teacher, was instrumental in turning the vision of the Living Skills Center into the reality of an innovative and exciting new program in 1972. With her service, her gifts, and her constant inspiration, Paula is committed to ensuring the continuation and financial safety of the Living Skills Center for future generations. With deep appreciation to Paula, we are proud to announce the Paula LeDuc Leadership Society, an annual giving club that recognizes anyone who gives $1,000 or more unrestricted funds in a given year.

Why $1,000?
Operating Expenses and salaries for staff at the Living Skills Center are covered by a contract with the California State Department of Rehabilitation. However, students pay all of their own expenses out of their SSI income, including: rent, gas and electric, telephone, laundry, food, public transportation, clothing, and incidentals. One of the most empowering experiences students have while in our program is learning how to manage their own money. However, in the last three years, expenses have risen beyond the students’ ability to pay. This gap in income versus expenses amounts to $1,000 for the year that a student attends the program. Until students learn the skills of independent living and are trained for the work force, we must fill this gap. That is why we have formed the Paula LeDuc Leadership Society, and why we are asking you to invest in this opportunity to have immediate impact in helping to change one person’s life forever.

Leadership Society members will receive special quarterly updates on the progress of our fund-raising activities. In addition, they will be honored at an appreciation dinner hosted by Paula. To become an inaugural member of the Paula LeDuc Leadership Society, please fill out the enclosed remit envelope and return it to the Living Skills Center. Thank you!

The Living Skills Center for the Visually Impaired

A WORLD CLASS ORGANIZATION

Within the past year the Living Skills Center (LSC) has been honored to host visitors from many parts of the world, all of whom have come to see first-hand our unique service delivery model with the idea that the same idea might possibly work in their countries. In the state of California, the LSC has the reputation of being the “Little Engine That Could,” and it has been gratifying and humbling to realize that, though we are still small, our reputation for excellence has spread throughout the world.
 

VISITORS FROM MAINLAND CHINA
In October of 2002, ten special educators from mainland China visited the LSC through the National Committee on U.S./China Relations. China had no special education programs at all until the late 1980’s and now, as they consider expanding assistance to their visually impaired citizens, they are looking at the most effective programs in the United States to see if similar programs could be implemented in China. We are honored to have been included on the roster of prestigious institutions the Committee visited: such as, Boston College and the Perkins School for the Blind. An especially delightful part of their visit included meeting and interviewing Scott Zhang, one of our current students, who is now a U.S. citizen, but who grew up in mainland China in the same province as one of the visitors! The Committee was very excited about our apartment living program and the possibility that a similar model could be used in China.

VISITORS FROM JAPAN
In November of 2002, three people from KGS Corporation in Japan, who heard about the Living Skills Center during the adaptive technology conferece at California State University at Northridge, visited the LSC.
They were very impressed with the program, and expecially with our cutting-edge adaptive technology lab. Our technology instructor, Ron Hideshima, who speaks Japanese fluently, explained the program and the way our students use technology in many practical ways to help with schoolwork, order groceries online, pay bills, find housing and job information, take notes in college classes, scan a syllabus and then listen to it with speech or print it out in Braille, and magnify print on the screen, to name just a few.
 

In return, the KGS visitors showed our students their product, the “Dot View,” a realtime graphical, tactile display that shows whatever is on the monitor, whether it is text or graphics, in a “feel-able” format. Subsequent to this visit, Ron was invited to be a guest speaker at the Japan Access Technology Forum. KGS paid for all of Ron’s expenses for this trip to Japan so that he could share his extensive knowledge of the field with Japanese peers. KGS sent the Living Skills Center some beautiful calendars as a thank you for our hospitality. Some of the prints from these calendars now adorn the walls of our tech lab.

VISITORS FROM RUSSIA
Dennis Fantin, who happens to be the brother of our friend Paula LeDuc, has visited Russia several times and has been instrumental in helping the country set up a disabled student service center at Novosibersk University in Siberia. When Dennis realized that visually impaired people in Russia not only had no services, they also had no canes and no travel instructors, he was motivated enough to come back home and write a grant to bring two people from Russia to this country, train them to teach orientation and mobility skills, and send them back to Russia to set up a teacher preparation program there. Two young women, Katya orientation and mobility at San Francisco State University. Katya and Yana have been in San Francisco now for 8 months. Last week they came with Dennis and spent the day at the LSC, learning about the program and the many practical ways our students use cane travel in their daily lives. Later in the week, Yana came back and observed our mobility instructors in action. We hope that their experiences here will be helpful in making this important new project a reality.

VISIT FROM THE DORM STAFF OF THE CALIFORNIA SCHOOL FOR THE BLIND
In December of 2002, sixteen members of the dorm staff at the California School for the Blind (CSB) visited the Living Skills Center to learn about the program. The visit was arranged by CSB dorm supervisor, Judith Lesner, who also happens to be the mother of one of our current students, Jacob Lesner-Buxton. Since the dorm staff serves CSB students in a home-like setting, they were eager to ask questions and exchange ideas about how to teach bed-making, money management and other important living skills to their young charges. A lively discussion ensued, and LSC instructors were very impressed with the commitment shown by CSB staffers to teach living skills whenever and however they can.

VISIT TO HAWAII
Instructors of the visually impaired from Hawaii saw our new website and became fascinated with the idea of an apartment living program. Local members of the national professional organization AER were about to put on a conference in Honolulu and asked for someone from the Living Skills Center to please come and put on a presentation about the LSC. Board member Scott Duncan was able to fly over for the April 2003 conference. He explained the LSC program, answered questions, and gave the local chapter many ideas about how it might be possible to get a similar program started in Hawaii. The attendees were grateful for Scott’s visit and extremely excited about the ideas he presented. While he was there, Scott also managed to get in a little sailing!
 

Skills Center Director speaks at CSB Graduation

On June 2, thirteen students at the California School for the Blind (CSB) in Fremont were honored with a ceremony commemorating their graduation from the program. The graduates, including current Living Skills Center student Amanda McClure, were presented with certificates by the CSB Program Directors and applauded for their accomplishments. Several of the students then came up to sing a beautiful piece called “My Journey”. The theater where the ceremony was held was completely filled with friends and supporters, many of whom were CSB and LSC graduates themselves.

Also present at the ceremony was LSC Director, Patty Williams, who had been asked to be the Keynote Speaker. Patty gave the grads plenty of sound advice and tips for life after graduation. Pearls of wisdom, such as, “Get your hands on a vacuum cleaner and find out how it works!” were offered in addition to more fundamental suggestions (“Be curious,” “Command respect,” “Don’t listen to the naysayers”). Patty encouraged the grads to look at opposition as, “an opportunity to hone the many skills you will need to survive in this world” and implored them to always strive for independence.

The California School for the Blind is a state-run program that was founded in 1860. Serving a wide age range, from pre-schoolers to students in their twenties, CSB plays a pivotal role in preparing blind and visually impaired Californians for successful living. The Living Skills Center has always enjoyed a close relationship with CSB. We have participated in a number of job fairs and outreach programs in the past to encourage CSB students to consider LSC the next step in the transition to full independence. Geographical proximity and a shared commitment to serving the blind/visually impaired population have made CSB and LSC partners and allies.