Venture Description: The Disability Awareness Team goal is to educate people on the challenges faced by the visually and hearing impaired community. We are learning sign language and are planning to take braille classes so we can teach others the way the deaf and blind communicate. We are planning to have one week in March at our school that will be dedicated to showing the student body what we have learned so they can gain new knowledge about the deaf and blind. We are going to visit deaf and blind social clubs, interview the people there, and retell their experiences to our classmates.

Venture Origin: The true genius behind this project is a fellow team member. She is the president of the Disability Awareness Team. She has made an entire outline of ways to help out the community such as fundraising money for the deaf and blind in our area.

Innovation: Our team is unique because each member has a passion for helping others. We want to understand what it must be like to not have all your senses because we realize we take them for granted. We hope this experience will make us become more compassionate and giving people.

Impact: We have impacted our sign language teacher. They were impressed at how young people were so eager to learn. Our classmates and teachers have been affected as well. Students are now interested in joining the group and teachers have offered a helping hand because they are impressed with our strong initiative.

Engagement with the community: Our venture has been in contact with ABC Language Exchange. Language Exchange is a school in San Francisco that offers over 23 languages. American Sign Language is the class we took there with our teacher Matthew Hysell. Youness Belfqih, who is the private program manager, set up the class for all of us. It was all for free and I am very glad that they gave us the opportunity to learn there.

Impact and engagement progress since launch: The Disability Awareness Team are going to go to Northern CA Association of the Deaf and Blind. We also want to go to Rose Resnick Lighthouse which is a support program for the deaf and blind. We want to volunteer there and help the facility out as much as we can.

Impact and engagement strategy: We are going to film a documentary capturing our experiences at all the organizations we visit so we can show others how the people there live. We want to be in the media so we can let more people know about our youth venture. I do Public Service Announcements for a television station and I could advertise our project.

Awards: We haven't received any awards yet, but I feel that we will in the near future.

Money raised: We haven't raised any money yet, but we are planning to have fundraisers so we can use it for our youth venture.

Creative ways of raising resources: We already have a seed grant for our venture.

Expansion plan for next 6 months: We hope that after our Disability Awareness week that will be held at our school that more of our classmates will be inspired to join the group.

Plans for sustaining the project: Me and another team member are Juniors . The rest of the team are all Sophomores. When I and the other Junior graduate next year, we want the sophomores in the group to continue our project when we are gone. A sophomore is the vice president so she will have the experience to lead the group.

Vision for three years from now: I can see our venture having raised $100's of dollars for deaf and blind organizations. I also think that we will have affected other schools and they would want to carry out the same project that we did.

Project impact: Our venture is giving the deaf and blind a chance to express themselves without being judged. We listen to their stories about their struggles and how they feel about their condition. We are giving them oppurtunity to share their feelings so we can educate other people about how they feel being in this world.

Youth Venture movement - what it means and how you can contribute: I am honored to be a part of the Disability Awareness Team. I take my senses for granted and find myself looking on the downside of life. I thought it would be a good idea to meet people who have always wondered what it is like to hear a song or see a beautiful person. A lot of the times these people are more positive than I am. I think it is good for me to look at someone else's view point who has had a life limited to experiences because of their condition. Our team can tell other schools or neighborhoods about Youth Venture through advertisements or flyers explaining the fundamentals of Youth Venture and how life changing it was for us.