Our Division Three Awards were given out on Friday July 23rd in Little Rock. The first award given out was The Samuel Gridley Howe Award for Outstanding Practice. It acknowledges exemplary service to individuals with visual impairments and multiple disabilities, including deafblindness.
- The award went to the late Dawn Saunders. Julie Durando read the following nomination by Emily Taylor-Snell -
- I nominate the late Dawn Saunders of the Florida Department of Education for the Samuel Gridley Howe Award for Outstanding Practice. We lost Dawn in early June, 2010 after a courageous battle with breast cancer. Even during her treatments, she continued to serve as the DOE consultant for Vision and Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing. Dawn provided many years of leadership on the Vision National Agenda, helping to craft several position papers for the need of professional development and increasing the number of people to our field. She was instrumental in the development of the Usher Screening materials to be rolled out later in 2011 in Florida.
– Dawn was a collaborator who sought to bring people together to solve problems and never lose the focus of serving children and their families. Dawn helped to lead a statewide workgroup for developing a series of training and supports for early intervention providers to serve families of children who are D/HH and Deaf-Blind. Dawn was also part of a team to provide a series training on a modified QPVI (Quality Programs in Visual Impairments developed by Nancy Toelle). This training initiative is called Building Local Capacity for Visual Impairment and has been conducted in the panhandle of FL and in south Fl in the Miami area. The team, in Dawn’s spirit of get it done, will begin meeting this week to plan the next series of training in Central FL for 2010-2011.
– Dawn represented children and youth with hearing loss, vision loss and deaf-blindness on many statewide and national committees. Two such committees included the Governor appointed FL Coordinating Council for Deaf/Hard of Hearing(FCCDHH) and FL Network of Deaf-Blindness (FNDB). Two accomplishments of FNDB is the outgrowth of a consumer –driven 5013c organization, FL Deaf-Blind Association. That group now has gotten the Governor’s Proclamation for Helen Keller Deaf-Blind Awareness Week in 2009 and 2010, and a presenter who is deaf-blind at the Vision Summit 2010 in Tallahassee supporting the work of the Vision Caucus for legislative support.
– These are but a few of the many contributions Dawn has made to the field. Her greatest gift was herself; knowledgeable, supportive, leading and partnering and always brimming with energy, a love of life and for the people we serve. Dawn will be deeply missed, but her spirit lives on!
