VIP Online Toastmasters Blog

Kirsten French is a programs specialist at the Northwest Association for Blind Athletes where she is Program Manager - Camp Spark and Sports Adaptations.

The mission of the Northwest Association for Blind Athletes is to provide life-changing opportunities through sports and physical activity to individuals who are blind and visually impaired. The organization provides five innovative programs to more than 1,900 children, youth, adults and military veterans who are blind and visually impaired across Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana.

Before joining the Northwest Association for Blind Athletes, Kirsten completed her undergrad in elementary and special education and taught life skills for a few years. Following that she got her Master's in Adapted Physical Activity, which is where she became passionate about sports for people who are blind or visually impaired. It was that path that to her present location and position.

Kirsten describes her journey this way...

"I had played on our college goalball team and had the opportunity to get involved in that sport and really saw the impact that sport can have." she saw, "how it can be used as a catalyst and as a teaching mechanism for teaching things even more so than just sports."

It was then that Kirsten realized that "physical activity can be a catalyst for greater independence and quality of life." She saw how much impact she was having on the people she worked with.

"That's what brought me to the Pacific Northwest. And really what made me want (to pursue) r not just working with people with any impairment in sports and physical activity, but specifically individuals who are blind and visually impaired."

"I really enjoy it, we have an opportunity to travel throughout the four states that we serve in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Montana. And it's a great opportunity to be able to be outdoors, which I love, and to be doing all the things that I love doing recreationally but doing this for my job."

"We do six different programs of our camp sparks sports adaptations, sports outreach, increasing visibility, scholarships, and sports teams. And through those programs, we reach athletes of different ages and different abilities...  we work with athletes at all different levels and mechanisms... some of our programs include Paralympic experiences for youth and school aged youth. We travel around through the four states to go to schools to give youth the opportunity to try transport that they've never tried before."

"For a lot of them, we will bring tandem bikes, and it's the first time they've ridden a bike, or maybe we're doing soccer and they have had a peer that said, well, you you're not able to see so you can't do soccer and we show them Yes, you can."

"We also do a lot with offering professional development opportunities and working in consultations with teachers and schools and parents on what are some ways that they can make their classroom and teaching more accessible to the students with visual impairments... 

Kirsten describes her teaching experiences as, at times, being, "a lightbulb moment for them of things that they haven't thought of before... It sparks a thought of 'I could also do this'... 'I could also do this'... and 'I realize how things aren't, it isn't this huge problem that you have to solve!"

To Kirsten the reward is when someone has the realization that you don't have to change everything because the little things can make a huge impact.

Kirsten believes, that "one of the most impactful things to take away from how sports and physical activity can impact life as a whole is... It's a great way to build relationships... it can be a catalyst for life impacting change."

We teach how to "ask for feedback" she believes empowers people to "advocate for themselves."

Kirsten is a member of VIP Online Toastmasters, a club dedicated to serving the visually impaired. At VIP Online Toastmasters Kirsten connects with others who share her passion for making the environment more accessible and the many challenges blind and low vision persons face.

The club is a safe environment within which to experience it's feedback culture. The foundation of its successful feedback culture is emotional safety, where club members build and maintain lasting relationships, have open dialogue and do not offer editorial opinions about the content of presentations, but do offer constructive criticism and highlight accomplishments about presentation delivery. That's the DNA of the VIP Online Toastmasters experience

Try a little gene therapy next Sunday... Visit our next meeting (3:30-5pm New York Time).