 Today, the Iris Network is holding the 19th annual White Cane Walk for Independence and we are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the National White Cane Safety Day, which commemorates the right to independent travel for people who are blind and visually impaired and the laws that ask motorists to yield the right of way to people using guide dogs or white canes. It's about 1.4 miles in total, so there will be a lot of sighted people, there will be a lot of blind people, there will be a lot of visually impaired people, there will be guide dogs, there will be canes, and there will be a lot of blue shirts and hopefully people traveling through Portland today will see us and maybe it will make them think a little bit more about being kind towards their blind and visually impaired neighbors. I'm the president of AlphaZ Delta at the University of Southern Maine and today we're here volunteering and learning about visual impairments and blindness. I am totally blind and I made that transition in my young adulthood and organizations like Iris Network are why I'm able to do all the incredible things I do today, so I want to support and ensure that everyone is going to have the opportunity to have these resources and that doesn't happen if people don't come out, celebrate a great event and help support a great cause. The White Cane Walk for Independence is an event to make people aware of the need to preserve independent travel for everyone regardless of disability and to make motorists mindful of the fact that people are crossing the streets that may not be able to see them and therefore they should be mindful and paying attention to driving and not texting. Right now we've got a tent set up for registration. Inside the tent we have some muffins and donuts and coffee and orange juice. We've got a raffle going on, you can buy some tickets and put them in different baskets depending on where you want to, what you think you would like to win. Let's see, we've got a radio station here, we've got a kissing booth for puppies so if you want to run down here and kiss a puppy, come on down. And we have a lot of guide dogs, service dogs here and so it's kind of a festive atmosphere. So far it's been amazing, we've had a lot of fun, we've met a lot of new people and there's a lot of puppy kisses going around so it's been really fun. You know my first thought is this, right? I celebrate ability awareness. We all have disabilities, things we can't do, right? For me I can't see. But to understand that we have so much that we can do, it's all about how we want to approach things and if people believe that, work with folks who may have whatever disability so that together they can succeed better, I think that's the first lesson. I would couple with that though, right? There's sort of one other note on that front which is that you know people have a disability, people are not disabled and that's such an important distinction in a parallel line, right? There's plenty of things I can do but I do have something I can't and that's understanding that fully I think is the essence of what this walk is about. This is a public education event, we hope to raise a little money here today to help us with our public awareness activities. We really do want more people to understand that people who are blind or visually impaired can live independent lives in the community. The Iris Network provides vision rehabilitation services so that people newly dealing with vision loss can learn the skills they need to live independently and pursue their vocation or application and be completely integrated into the community. It's the Baby Boomers which I'm one of as we get older, there's going to be more visual issues and we need the organization to be strong to provide help to those who are losing their sight to maintain independence. I've heard from a lot of people how they're seeing things change, right? I'm listening all the time to the conversations and there's a high energy, right? There's some positive steps being made and that's good but positive steps are only good if you keep taking them otherwise you're stuck. So absolutely good start, good progress, let's keep it going. You can learn more by visiting our website at www.theiris.org.