The birthday of famous deafblind person, Helen Keller, falls on 27 June and marks the start of this year’s Deafblind Awareness Week.
The week itself aims to raise awareness about deafblindness and increase the support for deafblind people and their families. There will be events and activities held nationwide which everybody get involved with, including our huge Drumathon event with up to 10,000 children from primary schools playing the drums. We’re still looking for more schools to take part in this exciting event so ask your local primary school if they are involved. If they are not, then show them the information about the event on our website and ask them to get involved.
Our theme to help celebrate Deafblind Awareness Week 2011 is ‘Journeys’.
For many of us, some of our day to day journeys may involve getting out of our home and talking with friends, relatives and neighbours, food shopping and travelling to work. Without the right support, deafblind people can struggle to make the simplest of journeys. Read more about the Walk with Me, Talk with Me campaign that we are running. We would love to hear your interesting stories about travelling.
This year, we are celebrating the achievements of deafblind people. We would love for you to organise and run your own fundraising activity to help us celebrate the week. Don’t forget, all ideas are great ideas…the only limitation is your own imagination! If you are looking for an idea then a sponsored journey of some type will link in wonderfully with the ‘Journeys’ theme. Contact the Community Fundraising Team to discuss your money making ideas or the Public Relations team to help get your story out there!
Our Sense charity shops also need good quality clothing, books, music and second hand furniture items to sell across our shops. The sale of items will raise money for funding the services for deafblind children and adults. You can organise a stock drive which can be held during the awareness week in your local community or work place. You can then drop your items into your local Sense shop or arrange for the shops’ trading department to collect the items directly from you. Find your nearest Sense shop or contact your local Sense warehouse for collecting the stock.
We are regularly asked to provide informative presentations about deafblindness and Sense to a variety of different people. Do you know any groups that you could talk to during Deafblind Awareness Week? If someone contacts you for a presentation why not schedule it for that week to give your fundraising activity an added boost? The Information and Advice Service Team can help you with preparing a presentation and provide you with some materials.
You can ‘Like’ our Sense profile on Facebook and ‘follow’ our other profile on Twitter, Ask your friends and followers to ‘Like’ us on Facebook and start to follow us on Twitter You can support our key messages during the awareness week by re-tweeting Sense tweets or sharing our posts on Facebook.
Thank you so much for your support!
