The Mayor of Camden, Councillor Dawn Somper has chosen to support Sense during her mayoral year. The Mayor first heard about Sense during her tenure as Deputy Mayor and was amazed by the work Sense does. As Mayor she is in a unique position to help increase awareness of deafblindness and the work Sense does to the people living and working in Camden and the surrounding boroughs.
One thing that has struck her as the ‘Older Persons Champion’ for the Camden area is our Fill in the Gaps campaign, and the increasingly large number of people who are acquiring sight and hearing impairments through old age but don’t know where to turn for help. She is very keen to deliver this message to as many people in the borough as she can.
During her year as Mayor, she hopes to influence the adoption of best practice methods across the Council departments, local businesses and services when serving deafblind customers. She also aims to encourage people who may not consider themselves to be deafblind but have dual sensory impairment to access more of the services available to them in the Camden area.
But it is not all about awareness raising. Throughout the year the Mayor’s Office have a several fundraising events planned, including an abseil from the roof of the Town Hall, ‘Beating the Bounds’ a walk around the boundaries of the borough of Camden, and the opening of the Terracotta Army exhibition at the British Museum.
Within the first three months of the Partnership the Mayor has already hosted myriad events for Sense including a tour and dinner at the House of Lords that raised over £4,000. She has held internal sensory impairment awareness lecture for the Camden Council staff, and attended a lecture aimed at support workers and health workers that may be caring for deafblind people, her office also helped us to secure the venue for this activity.
The Mayor has also visited one of Sense’s holidays for deafblind people, “Close Shave A” on which three deafblind holidaymakers travel on a canal boat from Hemel Hempstead to Broxbourne via Camden on the Grand Union Canal. The holidaymakers were delighted to have the opportunity to meet the Mayor and it added greatly to their holiday experience. This also afforded both Sense and the Mayor’s office a great PR opportunity, we were able to secure local press coverage with a full page story in the Hampstead and Highgate Express and the Camden New Journal.
To date the Mayor has already raised over £10,000 for Sense.
