Local Coordinator Update
Tuesday, October 14, 2003
National Coordinator of Disability Mentoring Day
American Association of People with Disabilities
1629 K Street, NW, Suite 503
Washington, DC 20006
(800) 840-8844, (Voice, TTY)
Email DMD
Disability Mentoring Day websiteIN THIS ISSUE
1. SPECIAL THANKS TO ALL OF YOU
2. PICTURES NEEDED FOR AAPD NOVEMBER NEWSLETTER
3. LAST YEAR FOR FREE AAPD MEMBERSHIPS
A WORD TO THOSE WHO ARE NEW
Welcome aboard! You have just joined a family of Local Coordinators from every part of the country, who are dedicated to using the mentoring concept to enhance employment opportunities for people with disabilities. The Local Coordinator Update, distributed periodically by the AAPD National Office, is the mechanism for staying in touch with our leaders on the ground about information that is important to them while keeping them up to date on latest national efforts to build DMD even larger.
The subject line of the Local Coordinator Update is written specifically to enable you to keep on your desktop and to organize alphabetically according to date (which is why the year is mentioned first before the month and day). We strongly advise you to retain these editions for future use, both for your own personal reference and to pass along to individuals who may succeed you in your Local Coordinator role. Again, welcome. Congratulations on the adventure on which you are about to embark!
1. SPECIAL THANKS TO ALL OF YOU
Well, everyone, that time has now arrived. For most of us, tomorrow -- October 15, 2003 -- is a day for which we have been preparing for several months or for as long as an entire year. Mentors and mentees are lined up, the media has been contacted, mentoring organizations have finalized logistics, the program agendas have been laid out and are ready to go, and students and job seekers are poised to attend. We have all shared with one another the experiences of intense preparation. We have worked hard to reach out to mentors and mentees alike. We have distributed posters, trifold flyers, fact sheets, brochures, and customized materials. We have taken questions, ironed out details, and worked through all manner of oral and written communications back and forth. Through it all, with everything that has been done, we are about to make a significant difference in the lives of between 6,000 and 7,000 students and job seekers with disabilities nationwide and beyond. Congratulations!
Our hats are off to the U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Disability Employment Policy as well as our corporate sponsors who have gotten involved both at a programmatic and financial level. We are also grateful to the countless men and women who are part of the State Organizing Committees and the Local Organizing Committees, and we are most especially appreciative to the mentors and mentees who are at the core of making all of this happen.
You are all to be commended for your hard work and for playing a key role in taking DMD to such a successful level. Thank you.
2. PICTURES NEEDED FOR AAPD NOVEMBER NEWSLETTER
Immediately after your respective DMD events, e-mail us your electronic pictures with captions so that we may potentially place them in the November issue of AAPD's widely-circulated newsletter. The newsletter printing deadline is this Friday, so we do not have much turn-around time. But, the faster you get us pictures electronically with appropriate captions, the more quickly your respective organizations may receive some immediate exposure nationwide. We may also distribute these pictures to media folks who request them and will post pictures online as well. (We already have a media request to feature an engineer mentee participant in DMD so, if a mentee of yours meets this description, please be sure to get pictures of the individual interacting with his or her mentee.)
Just be sure that, with what you send us, we have permission to reprint the names and images. If you send us pictures with captions, we will assume that you have on file written permission to reprint (see Photo Release Form in DMD Toolkit).
3. LAST YEAR FOR FREE AAPD MEMBERSHIPS
Please note that 2003 is the last year in which DMD mentor and mentee participants will be offered a free AAPD membership. This is the time to take advantage of our offer to give people an introductory membership at NO charge. At your earliest convenience, please e-mail us with the names, home addresses (not school addresses), phone numbers, fax numbers, and e-mail addresses of DMD participants so that we may enable them to join our ranks to become part of the largest and fastest-growing cross-disability national membership organization in the country. (Also indicate if they require information in alternative formats such as Braille, large print, computer disk, or cassette.) We will then process their membership accordingly so that they, too, may take advantage of our member benefits.