Hello Everyone!

My name is Beth Donofrio and I am the newly elected chairperson for Illinois Hands and Voices. In the past month since our elections, we have been working on transitioning everything over from our previous executive board to the new board members.  On top of that work we are now in full swing promoting our 4th Annual Mom’s Night Inn coming up January 24th and 25th. 

To give you a little background about myself  I am the proud mother of 5 children : Adam-18 a freshman at Northern Illinois University and he is hearing, Aubrey-15 a sophomore at Hinsdale South High School, she is a cheerleader there and on the softball team and she has a bilateral sensorineural hearing loss severe-profound. Alec-13 an eighth grader and football player who is hearing.  Aidan-3 who is in preschool and is hearing and finally Austin-18 months who is hearing as well.  Needless to say we lead busy lives!  I am married to a wonderful man named Scott and we live in Bolingbrook.

I am very excited to be heading up this organization and hope we can host some fun-filled events in the upcoming year.  Some exciting news to share is that Hands & Voices National has officially accepted Illinois’ application to bring their “Guide By Your Side” Program to Illinois.  This is a parent mentoring program that matches newly diagnosed families with experienced/trained “Parent Guides”.  There will be a lot more information coming in the future about this program.

I also want to welcome two previous board members to our executive board, Betsy Abou Ezzi, our new secretary/treasurer and Cathy Lyons Guidish, our Vice Chairperson.  There are also several other new board members: Carrie Balian, Karen Aguilar, and Rama Seats. Karen Putz, our previous chairperson, is still serving on the board with us as well. Our other board members are: Debbie Bernabei, Debbie DiAnni, Barb Edgar, Laura Fornal, Jane Holtz, Mary Clark, Sue Klytta and Nancy Scott.  We will be updating our website with all the new information about the board members and a little bio on each of them, look for that in the coming weeks.

We are very excited to provide interesting, informative information and events for our Illinois families so look for new information on our website frequently.  We will be making some changes to our website and we have a new email address:  ilhandsandvoices@gmail.com 

Please feel free to contact me at the above email with any questions or information you would like to share.

Sincerely,

Beth Donofrio

Chairperson, Illinois Hands & Voices