Welcome to the California connection for April 6.

DIABETIC AFFILIATE WAITING TO BE BORN:

From Ken Metz:
Hello to all CCB members.
I am interested in seeing if there is enough interest in starting a Diabetic Affiliate within CCB. There is a National Affiliate within ACB called ACB Diabetics in Action (ACBDA), and while we wouldn’t have to reinvent the wheel, we would be able to work on the State as well as the National levels to accomplish many of our ideas related to improvements in access related to Diabetes as well as hopeful solutions to meet the needs of persons who are blind, low vision and Diabetic, both Types I and II.

I have already spoken to Dee Clayton, the ACBDA President, and she has sent me their Constitution and Bylaws from which to create our own.

Please contact me at my e-mail address of kenmetz1946@gmail.com, or you can call me at (818) 882-3610-HOME or (323) 793-1805-CELL if you have questions, thoughts, or suggestions that we can pass around to determine what we’d like to accomplish. With enough interest, I will put a conference call together to get started with our organizational process.

Fresno Chapter Event:

Ccb Fresno will be holding at second annual Barnes & Noble Book fair from April 7-11. If you would like to show your support by making a purchase online, use code: 12351599, at check out.

If you would like more information about what we are doing in store on the seventh and eighth please email Sarah at crazyblindlady@gmail.com

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Resource And A Major Opportunity:

From the CCB advocacy committee:
The US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) www.consumerfinance.gov/empowerment/ provides important resources designed to address the specific issues faced by people with disabilities. And it presents these resources in several accessible formats.

CFPB also gives us a real opportunity to complain about abuses by financial firms. Blind and low vision people may be at especially high risk as more and more of our banking, bill paying, grocery-ordering and other business is migrating to the cloud, and as we advance in age. CFPB needs to know how all consumers are doing, but especially us.

Please check their website, including their resources such as the Toolkit. And if you have a complaint or a story that sheds light on the complexities of money these days, or that demonstrates the particular problems with financial institutions faced by blind and low vision people, please file your complaint or share your story with them.

Thank you for reading or listening