Meet the Board - Gail Mancewicz
As we work to provide equal communication access, education and advocacy to the Deaf, DeafBlind, and Hard of Hearing in pursuit of all life’s opportunities, we are grateful to a wide range of partners, including our Board of Directors. We want to share more about them with you. In this installment, we spend a little time with board chair Gail Mancewicz.Gail has a wide variety of life experiences, including working with developmentally disabled, foster youth and veterans. She has served in administrative capacities with agencies serving the homeless and the older adults, holds a master’s degree in social work and recently received a Juris Doctor in law and will be taking the Michigan bar exam.Learn more about Gail and her involvement on the D&HHS board below!
How did you first get connected to D&HHS?
What interested me in becoming a board member is first from a personal level. I am visually impaired and hard of hearing. These two challenges have given me a unique opportunity to assist others who may be experiencing the same challenges that I do. It is my hope that by being involved in D&HHS I can bring resources and assistance to others.
What’s one thing you love about being a D&HHS board member?
I enjoy serving on the board, and it gives me immense pride to know that I am a part of a needed and productive agency. One service that D&HHS provides that I am most proud of is their program to assist individuals obtain hearing aids who may not otherwise be able to due to the prohibitive cost of the device. Having hearing aids can make all the difference in the world when someone loses their hearing.
What would be lost if D&HHS didn’t exist?
Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services provides many services to adults and children, everything from American Sign Language interpreting and connection to community services to educational programs and access to assistive technology. I do not even want to think of what the communities would be like if D&HHS was not here. There would be a huge gap in services that could not be filled otherwise.
What’s one thing you wish people knew about D&HHS?
There is one program that I would like to be more known in the communities that D&HHS serves, as well as the wider community, and that is the Interpreter Services program. D&HHS provides American Sign Language services to the Deaf Deaf/Blind communities, and I wish that everyone knew of this service, so that all could take advantage of the program and more people could be recruited to become interpreters.