Position: Exampl

NCED: Yes

Location: Reno

Email: natrc@unr.edu

NCED: Yes

Email: rovetti@unr.edu

Phone: 775.682.9063

Mailing Address: NCED MS 285
University of Nevada Reno

City: Reno

State: NV

Zip: 89557

NCED: Yes

Email: syoungs@unr.edu

Phone: 775.682.9056

Mailing Address: NCED MS 285
University of Nevada Reno

City: Reno

State: NC

Zip: 89557

Position: Director

NCED: Yes

Email: rock@unr.edu

Phone: 775.784.6385

Fax: 775.784.4997

Mailing Address: NCED MS 285
University of Nevada Reno

City: Reno

State: NV

Zip: 89557

NCED: Yes

Email: mckinlay@me.com

Phone: 775-338.4810

Fax: 775.784.4997

Mailing Address: NCED MS 285
University of Nevada, Reno

City: Reno

State: NV

Zip: 89557

NCED: Yes

Email: sharring@unr.edu

Phone: 775-682-9059

Fax: 775.784.4997

Mailing Address: NCED MS 285
University of Nevada Reno

City: Reno

State: NV

Zip: 89557

Position: Bryant

NCED: Yes

Email: mhbryant@unr.edu

Mailing Address: NCED MS 285
University of Nevada Reno

City: Reno

State: NV

Zip: 89557

The camp, staffed with VISTA volunteers and funded through BVR, was organized into two workshop-style groups. One focused on employment and the other focused on higher education. The employment group discussed topics such as how to find a suitable job and how to dress for an interview. Students in this group also had help writing resumes and went on mock interviews. Students in the education group discussed how to choose a major and what to expect from professors and their (occasionally boring) lectures.

At night, the campers performed skits, played games and attended a David Copperfield show (they were, after all, in Las Vegas.)

Pavan Vangipuram, a VISTA volunteer who helped run the camp, said the feedback has been largely positive.

Vangipuram said that even the speakers who failed to capture the students’ imagination  turned into a valuable lesson. After all, they have to learn how to sit through those boring college lectures.

Read more about VISTA volunteers at:
Capturing stories of self-advocacy
Posting People First advocacy all over the capital
VISTA website

But the smell sets it apart. Everything smells like coffee.

Berry’s house is connected to his business: the roasting shed that is Blind Dog Coffee Company.

Mark Berry, owner and roaster of Blind Dog Coffee Company, shows off a newly cooked batch of coffee beans.

Berry is solidly built from years of horse shoeing, timber logging and mule packing supplies into remote locations. He has frizzy gray hair radiating from his head and matching walrus-like sideburns.

But he also has the type of demeanor that easily sets strangers at ease. He’s friendly, curious and definitely, absolutely not shy. He shakes hands, jokes and immediately explains, “If I start heading like I’m going to bump into you, just speak up. You won’t hurt my feelings.”

Berry is blind.

When Berry was two, he had retina blastoma, which caused tumors to form behind his right eye. He was part of the 10 percent of children who survived the radiation available in 1958, but lost the vision in his right eye.

Fifty years later, the side effects of that radiation razed his remaining eyesight, leaving Berry completely blind within a year.

“One of the things that scared me to death was how am I going to make a living?” he said. “You know, as sighted people, we always hear about a blind person who does something, but not many.”

He racked his brain and remembered a scene from his mule-packing days. On Berry’s route through King’s Canyon National Park, a local ranger would clip plastic baggies onto a clothesline to hold his outgoing mail and grocery list. One day, there was also a note reading “Coffee’s on,” so Berry joined the ranger for a cup of coffee.

It was the best he had ever had. From that moment on, Berry hunted down good coffee and kept the idea of owning a roasting company in the back of his head.

As his eyesight started to fade, he contacted roasters all over the country (including some who had previously helped set up partially sighted people with roasters), went to conferences and bought specialty equipment such as talking scales, Braille-covered switches and timers that counted down time out loud. He bought beans to experiment with blends, burning some, spitting some out and, finally, finding a palatable blend to start brewing.

Berry outfitted the switches that operate his coffee roaster with Braille.

Currently, Berry’s coffee beans are sold in area shops, but he hopes to expand. He wants to set up a Blind Dog coffee shop, staffed by blind and partially-sighted baristas.

Read more about Mary Berry’s coffee-roasting process at:
Roasting roadblocks to employment for people with trouble seeing
Learn more about Blind Dog Coffee at:
Blind Dog Coffee
Learn more about Assistive Technology at:
NCED’s Assistive Technology page

“[The Sierra Regional Center] told me about People First and I didn’t know anything about it,” he said. “I went to an interview and everyone seemed really nice.”

A photo of Travis Mills, who became involved with People First as a VISTA volunteer.

Through that interview, Mills ended up landing a job as a VISTA volunteer. Now, he’s worked on a half dozen or so projects and plans to stay with the self-advocacy group as long as he can.

Mills has written agendas for monthly meetings, updated the People First website, created flyers for chapter meetings, and created and updated a YouTube account. Now, he’s beginning an even bigger project: writing a grant to outfit People First chapters with video equipment.

Mills’ goal is to equip each chapter with a digital video camera and accessories like memory cards and video editing software. With their new technological capabilities, chapters would be able to create video updates about their recent activities and record personal histories of members’ involvement with self-advocacy.

Mills was drawn to this project not only because he has a passion for video editing, but also to promote the strengths, weaknesses, abilities and disabilities of his fellow People First members.

“I have a disability myself and I like to advocate the People First members,” Mills said. “If we do self-advocacy and self-determination on each guest speaker, we could get the word out.”

So far, Mills has filmed two People First members’ stories. He plans to start editing them while completing his grant work.

Read more about People First at:
NCED’s People First page
People First of Nevada’s website
People First YouTube channel

Read more about VISTA volunteers at:
AmeriCorps’ website