Greetings!

The GVRRID board regrets to announce that the charter bus to Philadelphia has been cancelled due to lack of interest. We hope to offer another charter bus next year for the Regional Conference in Albany.

President’s Report from the RID e-Views for May 15^th

Spring is a beautiful time here in Rochester! The flowers and especially the lilacs are blooming. It’s the beginning of our short but VERY full festival season, where just about every weekend between now and Labor day you can get your fill of cotton candy, arts and crafts, crowds and live music. It is also the ending of the college year, bringing a new crop of interpreter colleagues into our midst.

We continue to be busy here in Rochester, growing our organization, listening to our membership, and reaching out to the community. We hold meetings quarterly, our most recent being April 11^th. Turnout was good, approximately 30 people, on the day before a major holiday! We got through a lot of business at the meeting, including the proposal, discussion and eventual rejection of 2 potential motions for the national conference. After the meeting, we featured a workshop, “English for Interpreters” taught by Jean Rodman. Locally the past 3 months has also featured the third bi-annual Deaf Rochester Film Festival, which featured an international line-up of films in ASL, English, and other national sign languages, featuring many Deaf actors and subjects; made by Deaf and hearing filmmakers. GVRRID was proud to support this event. Baseball season has also begun, and one of our local freelance agencies sponsors interpreting services for the announcements, songs and special events at the games, making the stadium that much friendlier to Deaf fans of baseball.

GVRRID and the western NY interpreting community have been fortunate to have the Community Interpreter Grant, which for the past 10 years has provided 135 workshops and supported numerous additional professional development opportunities. On June 30^th, 2009 the grant will close and much of the professional development opportunities for the Rochester area will fall back upon GVRRID and other businesses and community organizations. We all owe a great deal of thanks to the tireless work of Sarah Schiffeler, as well as the state government support that we’ve had from our local assemblywoman Susan John which made these opportunities possible. Upcoming major events through GVRRID include a graduation party for our local interpreter training program, in conjunction with a Deaf Festival being held at a local park on May 30^th, as well as hosting Ben Hall and Linda Ross for “NIC Nuggets” on June 6^th at NTID and finalizing the Colonomos foundations series for 2009-2010. GVRRID will also be continuing the provision of professional supervision through Demand Control Schema. We anticipate continuing to offer supervision through the summer, as well as offering another Demand Control workshop and training for people who want to facilitate professional supervision. Our members and the Professional Development Committee have many ideas and desires in addition to these which we hope to set out and pursue in a year long series of workshops and trainings.

In technology and communications for the Rochester community, we have much to report. Our revised website has finally been launched, you can find it at www.gvrrid.org. New to the website are a local events calendar, a list of local and national work opportunities, and more information about our organization. This is only the beginning! We have plans for further features and development as well. Also of note is the release of a groundbreaking silent, ASL only PSA featuring Linda Bove on the topic of depression. This PSA was produced though a great deal of collaborative effort including the Deaf Wellness Center – an outpatient psychological / psychiatric program at the University of Rochester Medical Center, the Rochester Ad Council, and Roberts Communications. This PSA was funded in large part American Psychiatric Foundation. You can find it here: ASL PSA on depression. Finally, the National Center for Deaf Health Research, a Prevention Research Center at the University of Rochester, in light of the recent swine flu epidemic, put up several videos on its website, explaining swine flu in ASL to the signing community. Feel free to check it out at www.urmc.edu/ncdhr.

We are looking forward to the National Conference in August, hoping to bring our own busload of folks down from the Rochester area. We are also looking forward to the first regional conference in a while, happening next August, 2010 close to home in Albany, NY.

Thanks for reading! Enjoy your spring!

Kimberly Kelstone, CI/CT