The weather may be grey outside today, but the sun shone brightly at our classic car event on Sunday! Hear more about it below and how you can help us in your local area here … 
Author: brownbooth
YMCA Bournemouth and Dorset Blind Association launch health & wellbeing festival
YMCA Bournemouth and Dorset Blind Association have launched their Feel Good Festival taking place on Saturday 24th June at Boscombe Pier.
This charity partnership brings together the local community, businesses and charities for a day of fun fitness activities. The festival opens at 11am and runs until 11pm with various free activities for the whole family from fitness sessions to kids sporting challenges. The event day will starts with HIIT training, following by family zumba, pilates, yoga and much more. Feel Good Festival is not all just about sporting activities but will be filled with stalls, charity stands and refreshments too.
The charities’ annual races will be part of the festival with YMCA’s kids’ races and 5 mile zig zag challenge which will see individuals and teams race along the seafront including the Southbourne zig zag path. In addition, Dorset Blind Association’s Bright for Sight Night run which is back for its 2nd year. People who join Bright for Sight Night Run can enjoy 5k or 10k run with glow sticks, head torches, neon paint, anything that glows! Participants can even enjoy an unique warm up session from Clubbercise professionals in Bournemouth.
Lucy Culkin, YMCA Bournemouth Business Development Manager, said: “It’s great to work with a charity which also has the community’s health & wellbeing at the centre of their mission”
“Thanks to our sponsors Parley Optometrists, Nationwide, Sainsbury and Boscombe & Southbourne Rotary Club, we are able to bring Feel Good Festival to life”. Helena, Event Fundraiser from Dorset Blind Association, said “Their kind donations mean that nearly all money raised at the Festival goes to supporting the vulnerable people in the local area”.
Please visit https://Feelgooddorset.eventbrite.co.uk to register your interest for free activities and to enter the running events.
For other information and enquiries, please contact feelgooddorset@gmail.com or 01202 712864
March Fundraising E-Newsletter
What a busy month it’s been here at Dorset Blind Association, with lots of kind community and business support and the completion of many Fitness February challenges! A huge well done to everyone that took part, including our very own Community Support Worker, Leah! More…
Rowing to raise funds for blind and visually impaired people in Dorset
Dorset Blind Association are seeking rowers and fitness fans to join them in Bournemouth Square on Friday 7th April, to carry out their Virtual Row Challenge.
Teams of 4-6 people will be competing to row 10,000 meters on a rowing machine quicker than any other team, while individuals can attempt to row the fastest 250 meters in Bournemouth.
Last year, Dorset Blind Association have managed to raise £2,000 through the rowing challenge with the help of teams from local businesses Nationwide, Van Guard Security Services, and Barclays.
This year, Virtual Row is being held on Friday 7th April at Bournemouth Town Centre with teams taking one hour slot from 9am to 6pm. The charity organization is seeking teams of up to 6 people from local companies and businesses to sign up and take on the 10,000 metre challenge, where participants will take it in shifts to row part of the overall distance faster than their competitors.
“This is a great team building activity for staff and is a great opportunity for businesses and companies to get involved with the community in Bournemouth Town Centre” – Helena Sinclair, the Events Fundraiser from Dorset Blind Association, talked about the benefit of this event – “We’re also asking our participants to raise more funds through sponsorship which could help us a lot in supporting blind and partially sighted people in the area”
Virtual Row challenge is not only opens for team from companies but also the public are more than welcome to take up the 250m rowing challenge onsite for small donation of £2. Prizes will be given to fastest teams and fastest individuals, who will be announced after the event.
Dorset Blind Association provides various services and practical help for blind and partially sighted people across the whole of Dorset where there are more than 30,000 people with sight loss. This number is predicted to increase every year and will reach 35,000 in 2020. This will cause an increase in demand for the charities services and support.
If you would like to take part or would like more information of Virtual Row challenge call 01202 712864 or email helena@dorsetblind.org.uk
This year, Dorset Blind Association has a busy fundraising events calendar with a huge variety of events. Fancy a day out for the family and car enthusiasts at Lulworth Castle Classic and Sports car show in May? Up for running for Bright for Night Sight in June? or even joining the DBA team and cycling from London to Paris in September? Contact the fundraising team for more information – 01202 712864.
#virtualrow
“Alexa, Play Elton John..”
Another Christmas and another tough decision. What to buy your visually impaired family member. They probably have a drawer of 30 identical socks, so that cleverly any two randomly selected make a pair, right?
Well this year the retail giant Amazon came to the rescue…
A new voice-controlled virtual assistance device called the Echo Dot, after being in America for two years, finally came to the UK. It is about the size of a hockey puck and quickly becomes a great companion wherever in your home you choose to plug it in. As well as the £50 to buy one, you will need wifi, wireless internet and probably 5 minutes support from that 6 year old technical expert grandchild we all seem to have, but after that all you’ll need is your voice. She responds on hearing the word “Alexa”.
If you like technical stuff then Alexa offers exciting potential, including things like turning the heating up and down and turning lights on and off, turning on the coffee machine, all at your command. However, it’s the simple stuff around organising your schedule, music and reading books, that has my visually impaired friends all rushing to buy one.
“Alexa, Set me an alarm call for 7am” and she confirms back she has done so and at 7am she wakes you up.
“Alexa, Stop” and she will turn off the alarm. My more likely response in “Alexa snooze” and she will try me again in 9 minutes.
“Alexa, What is the weather like today” and she will let you know the temperature and whether you will need that umbrella.
“Alexa, Give me my daily briefing” and she will give you the news headlines.
“Alexa, play Jazz FM” and she will start playing your chosen radio station.
“Alexa, play songs by Elton John” and she will play a random selection of songs by Elton, or whoever you asked for.
“Alexa, read my audio book and she will start playing my latest audio book from the last place I got to.
“Alexa, remind me I have a doctor’s appointment next Wednesday. When you ask her your schedule for that day, she will tell you
It is difficult to do it justice in a short article and hopefully we will get one in the DBA offices soon, so if you are passing you can say Hello. My children have used Alexa for their homework, practicing spelling words or asking her general knowledge or trivia questions. She has a sense of humour too, just ask her to tell you a joke and she will. There seems no limit to what you can ask and if she is not capable of doing it, you are at least going to get a witty reply. That burning question of why the chicken crossed the road is one of my favourite retorts.
Clever people are continually developing new features that work with Alexa to interact with her companion. Seemingly the potential is endless. Oh hang on, I just asked her “Alexa, make me a sandwich” and she replied “I wish I could. Cooking is beyond me at the moment”. Looks like I am going to need that technical expert 6 year old once again to find the branston pickle.
Mark Noble.
#amazondot #echodot #alexa #visuallyimpaired
We want to thank our kind supporters who helped us raise £28,000 in two days
The local community helped us smash our target in the two-day Big Give Christmas Challenge. Online donations to the charity via the Big Give website on Friday 4th and Saturday 5th December were matched by Candis magazine. The match funds plus Gift Aid mean a whopping total of £28,110; exceeding the £25,000 target needed to fund our 25 blind clubs for the year.
We want to publicly thank the local people for their outstanding support and generosity during the two-day challenge and in the run-up to the appeal when volunteer fundraisers ran a series of county-wide collections and fundraising activities.
The public contributed £2,500 during festive collections in towns and supermarkets across Dorset by the charity’s volunteers. Aside from collections, supporters also held other fundraising events such as raffles and challenges. The biggest contribution from a single fundraiser was £2,281 from Dave Clemas who cycling 1708 miles across France and paid the money in via the Big Give meaning our charity benefited over £5,000.
Dorset Blind Association is funded entirely by voluntary contributions to fund our work, which costs almost £400,000 per year to support thousands of blind and partially sighted people to live happy lives. Part of this work is relieving loneliness and isolation with their 25 social and activity clubs. Those clubs support over 500 people in different parts of the county, supported by many caring volunteers and will now be funded for the next year thanks to the public support of the charity’s Big Give Christmas Challenge.
Nathan is a member of the Bournemouth Social-Eyes club for working age people with sight loss. Last year Nathan lost his sight due to Stargardt disease, an inherited form of macular degeneration. Nathan found he withdrew from socialising when he lost his sight but is starting to enjoy a full social life again now thanks to the Dorset Blind Association club. Nathan said “Most people who are going blind started off working and going out with our friends – to go from that to nothing is hard.” He continues “I hid away and I went in to a massive depression. Now I’m trying again. It’s nice to talk to people on the same level, who know how it feels. It pushes you to get out and do things; lunches, art, acoustic shooting. Without Dorset Blind Association I wouldn’t be doing any of that.”
Jaya Da Costa, Fundraising Manager for Dorset Blind Association says “This is a fantastic team effort and we are so heartened that the local community and our wonderful volunteers see the value of what we do and dug deep to support our work. What a beautiful Christmas gift for our blind club members. We cannot thank you enough!”