Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Advisory Board Member: Keri Darling, DVAS- Deaf Victims Advocacy Services, Vermont

Keri Darling is currently the director/trainer for Deaf Vermonters Advocacy Services (DVAS), in the beautiful green mountains of Vermont.

Keri has been deaf since age 2 ½ years old, growing up in rural Vermont with a hearing loss with no access to interpreters or sign language was quite a struggle. Keri attended RIT (Rochester Institute of Technology) where she found the different kinds of accessibility options that are available to hard of hearing or late deafened or deaf people. It was there at RIT, Keri learned about Deaf culture and sign language and boy did this change her life! Luckily, with Keri’s background growing up in a non deaf (hearing) community and her experience during college, to this day she can be involved in the Deaf community or the non deaf community fairly well.

Keri started out in the independent living field by becoming the Manager of the Deaf Independence Program under the Vermont Center for Independent Living (VCIL). In this capacity, she oversaw deaf staff, and clients who needed Independent Living Skills development and accessibility awareness for deaf and hard of hearing on systems level. During her time at VCIL, she was able to develop a telecommunications distribution program in Vermont for low income Vermonters who have hearing loss, who needed telephone equipment but couldn’t afford it. She was also instrumental in setting up TTY payphones in all Rest areas in the state of Vermont.

It was during this time as the manager of the Deaf Independence Program where Keri began to notice abuse happening in the deaf community, through her clients or other people in the general community. It was then she researched and found Marilyn Smith, Executive Director of ADWAS (Abused Deaf Women’s Advocacy Services) from Seattle, Washington, who is the pioneer of the Deaf Domestic Violence (DV) and Sexual Assault(SA) movement, as her agency was the first ever Deaf agency, run by deaf, for the deaf victims/survivors of abuse.

Keri also learned about a federal grant called VOCA (Victims Of Crime Act), applied and received money to train law enforcement officers on how to communicate with Deaf and hard of hearing victims/survivors and resources available to help serve these victims/survivors. Keri was then invited to join the National Training that ADWAS provided so that other cities or states can start their own Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault agencies. After completing that training in 1999, Keri started DVAS in 2000 and has since been involved in the Deaf DV/SA movement.

In the past 8 years, Keri has received numerous local and national awards for her work in creating awareness about accessibility for Deaf and hard of hearing victims/survivors. She has also been offering consultant work related to issues or barriers that Deaf and hard of hearing victims/survivors experience and how to break those barriers down, along with resources about technology and relay services information.

Keri has been a leading speaker on cultural accessibility: considerations when serving victims/survivors with hearing loss for many years now on the local and national level.
Keri has developed numerous training tools for law enforcement, hospitals and EMT’s when encountering Deaf people. If you would like to see more about this, please go check out our website, www.dvas.org and click on training.

Currently, she is also serving on the Advisory Board for the newly formed JDVNC (Justice for Deaf Victims National Coalition) and she and her fabulous employees will be hosting the National Conference for JDVNC members in October 2008 in Vermont.



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