Ability Beyond the Horizon

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

2012-05-01T06:06:00.000-04:00

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...

2012-03-01T08:17:00.000-05:00

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

2012-01-13T21:02:00.000-05:00

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