Our Signing Town

Transcript of the Video Blog

Hi! I’m Marvin Miller. Nowadays, more and more deaf people are posting video blog commentaries. I wasn’t sure if I was ready for that… hiding behind English words. But I decided to go ahead and do it anyway! Why? A lot of people have been asking us, "What is happening with Laurent? We’re curious. We want to know what’s happening. Is the town built already?"

No. Not yet.

Now, we are here in our office in a small town named Salem, S.D. We are about 40 miles west of big city of Sioux Falls.

I know, I know… you’re looking at me funny, "You call Sioux Falls a big city?!" It is indeed the largest city in South Dakota. To me, any city that has shopping mall and plenty of restaurants is a big city!

Now, we are working hard.  Funding… that angel group who have been working on the funding for the past 2 years, they thought we would get it done soon. Not so. That leaves us wondering. They are still working on it, and they haven’t quit or given up.

But we are still discussing on what our next steps. We have two organizations. One is non-profit, 501c3 tax exempt, The Laurent Institute for purposes of community development and the other is for profit, The Laurent Company to afford investors an opportunity to invest in the development. We are looking at both to move forward the vision of building Laurent. We’re still working out details of how.

We have one potential deaf investor who expressed an interest in working with us on financing the project. He feels he can bring others on board once the numbers are all worked out. We will be working with a different set of numbers for investors than our angel funding group.

So for next couple of weeks, we will be working hard on putting together the necessary numbers in order for the project to move forward.

We will keep you posted on this blog. The most important thing I can say is that we are not giving up. We are still here and working.

I will be giving a presentation on Laurent in Brattleboro, Vermont on October 28th at their local Deaf Expo. For those in the New England area or on the east coast, feel free to come up and see my presentation. You can ask me questions!

So with this video blog, I will be adding more information over the time especially on why building Laurent is so important and its impact worldwide.

So we’re working. Positive thoughts, prayers, ideas and feedback are definitely welcome! We may not be able to answer all e-mails, but we are all ears… or should I say, all eyes!

In closing with my first video blog, some of you may ask, "What can I do?" Talk about this vision. Why it benefits everyone and start thinking about your own business ideas and plans. Even start saving.

Also, you can donate online to The Laurent Institute, and your donation will be tax deductible. Any amounts from $1 to bazillions are definitely welcome!

Thank you.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 31st, 2006 at 7:26 pm and is filed under Laurent. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.