Elected President.

Yesterday, I drove 90 minutes to the Georgia chapter of American Sign Language Teachers' Association (GA-ASLTA) meeting in Decatur. I met up with 12 wonderful and intelligent people who are in the field of interpreting, teaching, advocacy, and more. There are 27 members altogether in this organization.

This meeting marked the one year anniversary of their founding however the chapter has not really gotten going until 3 months ago. In the meeting, we've discussed about the progress of getting a tax-exempt status id, setting up a website, promoting the revisions of the ASL bill, providing workshops, and recruiting more members.

During the meeting, I was happy to see that I was making an impact by making two motions. First was to appoint a videographer and videotape all of our future workshops so we can show 30-45 second clip on our future website and set up a video library where people can rent or buy them. Second was to have one or two person to attend the Deaf Awarness Banquet at Macon on April 22nd as an exhibitor for GA-ASLTA to spread awareness of the organization and recruit more members.

At the end of the meeting was the election for the position of the President and Professional Development Coordinator position. The positions are for two year terms. Elections came up early for those two positions because one has moved out of state and another is moving out of state soon. To my surprise, I was nominated and I've accepted the nomination because I know I can and will make positive impact on the building progress that this organization is going through. No one else was nominated nor wanted to be nominated, I was accepted by the 12 other members as their new President. As for the Professional Development Coordinator position, no one has come forward to run for this position so the person who has held this position will continue to hold the position until the next meeting.

To sum all of this up, I truly look forward to successfully get this organization growing in terms of members and money to be able to make a bigger impact for all types of community in Georgia. We will be having a board meeting shortly and our next event is our first annual St. Patrick's ASL fest on the campus of Atlanta Area School f/t Deaf (AASD) on March 18th. If any of you Georgians reading this blog are interested to inquire more of the organization or want to join, please do contact me at sonnyjames(at)yahoo.com