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One Saturday in January 2007 at the College of the Holy Cross Jessica Acox ‘07, a student in the Deaf Studies program at the College of the Holy Cross, attended an Open Forum for deaf blind consumers facilitated by Elaine Ducharme, Director of Deafblind Community Access Network (DBCAN) in Allston, MA.  It was at this meeting Jessica heard directly from deaf blind individuals that they would like to have more social events in the Central Massachusetts area. That gave Jessica the idea to coordinate a social event for her class project in the Deaf Studies community based learning course with Prof. Judy Freedman Fask.

On Saturday, April 14, 2007 a large crowd of about 80 people gathered at St. Matthew’s Church in Worcester, MA to enjoy a community event and game of Bingo.  Deaf adults, Deaf and Hearing children, Deaf Blind individuals, Support Service Providers (SSPs), ASL student volunteers from the College of the Holy Cross, Northeastern University, Northern Essex Community College and Mount Wachusett Community College all had great fun that day: playing various games of bingo, winning raffle prizes, and eating pizza!  The collaborating agencies included the College of the Holy Cross Deaf Studies program (Judy Freedman Fask), Worcester Deaf Senior Center (Claire Constantin), Center for Living and Working (Brenda Rennie), DBCAN (Elaine Ducharme), DEAF, INC (Sharon Applegate), and St. Matthew’s Church (Rev. Nancy Strong).  This entire program was free to the people attending due to a generous donation from the Marshall Fund grant at the College of the Holy Cross and the hard working efforts of Jessica!!