4 Portland State University Students Volunteer With BIRRDsong
Friday, November 11, 2011 at 7:00PM 
From left: Katie Loebner, Lisa DiGiannantonio, Dr. Rik Lemoncello, Lindsay Yard and Erin Robling
On Friday, November 11, 2011, Dr. Rik Lemoncello, Assistant Professor in the Speech and Hearing Sciences Department at PSU, facilitated the volunteer support of Lisa DiGiannantonio, Katie Loebner, Erin Robling and Lindsay Yard. All met with BIRRDSong Board members Marih Alyn-Claire, board president, and Cheryl Green, Assessment and Creative Programs, for a volunteer orientation session including a brief history of BIRRDsong and an overview of our programs and services.
All four students are specializing in speech and hearing sciences and expressed a strong desire to work with people with brain injury. They each expressed excitement to begin their three month volunteer service committment.
Cheryl and Marih openly shared their personal experiences facing both the adverse and postive effects of brain injury. They shared daily challenges caused by cognitive impairment, including face recognition, heightened startle repsonse, noise and light sensitivity, emotional reactivity, overstimulation, fatigue and short term memory challenges. Marih emphasized that BIRRDsong is a developmental peer-led brain injury recovery support community. "Our goal is to create new approaches and assistive methods to help peers accomplish their goals, creating fulfilling and successful lives in spite of brain injury."
Students will begin their service work by participating in the planning of the December Fundraising Campaign. "We have an immediate need for acquiring sufficient workspace in order to deliver the types of essential services that peers really need," Marih explained. "As an all-volunteer service organization, we very much appreciate and depend on community support." Erin Robling is currently facilitating the Fundraising Planning Team and will be working with the Revenue Development Committee following our fundraiser. Each of the three remaining students, Lindsay, Lisa and Katie, will work with one of the following programs: Assessment, BIRRDsong Home-to-You or the website.
BIRRDsong sends a big warm welcome to our wonderful student volunteers!
Thank You for your SUPPORT!