I’m glad to hear that the National Association of the Deaf is planning a Leadership Training Conference April 3-5 at the Texas School for the Deaf in Austin. This is a good way for the NAD to use its limited resources because it can have a domino effect as the people who attend the conference return home and put their newfound knowledge to work. I’m just puzzled as to who it is for.
An NAD news release says the conference is for “young up-and-coming leaders.” Young? How young? Is there a specific range of ages? Is there a cutoff point?
I became more confused when I looked at the registration form and came to one part that said: My age range is __20s __30s __40s __50s
Ahh … so you don’t have to be THAT young to attend that conference — but you can’t be THAT OLD, either!
If your 60th birthday has come and gone, you can forget about being a deaf leader. We don’t want you. You can tell by our form.
But if you look at some of the topics to be discussed …
– Characteristics of Effective Leaders
– Promoting Diversity through Listening and Respect
– Nonprofit Legal and Financial Accountabilities
– Ways to Get Creative with Fundraising
– Proactive and Responsible Communication using Blogs and Vlogs, and more
… you can see they have some good topics planned that would be of interest and benefit to deaf activists no matter how old they may be. Retired deaf people with the skills and energy and desire to make things better in the deaf community will not feel especially welcome by the way this conference is presented.
I’m all for NAD’s attempts to get more young people involved to bring in new ideas and energy, but our community is too small to throw up barriers to people who want to learn how to become leaders, just because of how many candles were on their last birthday cake
6 Comments
February 3, 2008 at 5:10 pm
I dont’ geet it either. Comfusing … do they wanna to have just young people come or not? Why put it like that way on the forms? 20s-50s etc? 60 too old?? Not me thing so …….
February 6, 2008 at 6:20 pm
Facing age discrimination by NAD of all organizations?? And NAD professes to be open to all of the deaf community, yeah, uh-huh.
February 7, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Well, I’m retired and I’m deaf, so I fit those two principle categories, but also, I don’t sign and I DO need closed-captioning, so where does that leave me?
February 7, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Where does it leave you? According to NTID, it leaves you home.
February 7, 2008 at 1:16 pm
age have nothing to do with leadership what has to do with leaders (work with the community and stand by the people who support and vote for the leaders in office
February 10, 2008 at 6:04 pm
I think the organizations that serve deaf and hard-of-hearing people need to be as inclusive as possible and set examples for one and all. They should not be setting up any barriers, as we are seeing here with NAD and its dismissal of older people, and with NTID and its refusal to provide interpreters during the reunion workshops. I think when we see things like this, we need to say Hey!