Author: brownbooth

Our charity remains open for business to continue helping our community during the second lockdown period.

We can be contacted through our office during normal working hours, our community support service and our equipment service remain fully engaged and we are here to help in whatever way we can, within government rules.

Our Charity shops however will be closed now as we head into lockdown 2. We all hope the break this time is only as long as they have said and we will have lots of lovely items waiting for you upon our return!

We want to thank the wonderful people who donated items and shopped with us over the last few months. To all our shop staff and volunteers, well done for the marvellous effort and huge sales since we came back from the previous lockdown.

BBC Radio Solent was interested in how people with sight loss cope with getting out and about with the social distancing restrictions. Karen Wye let them tag along on one of her outings to give them some insight. You can listen to Karen and Moira Kopanycia-Reynolds on the Radio Solent Breakfast Show below.

Hear the Radio interview here:

We were delighted to be told just yesterday that our application to the Coronavirus Community Support Fund had been successful, and we’ve been awarded a grant to help fund the ongoing delivery of our mobile equipment service for the next 6 months. That’s a vitally important service, giving people direct access to specialist equipment and aids to daily living which help visually impaired people to maintain independent and active lives.

The fund is distributed by The National Lottery Community Fund on behalf of the Government, so a big thanks from us all to the Government for helping us to keep helping our members in this way.

Help us celebrate our 102nd Birthday! It’s a challenging year (minor understatement) and we’d like you to help us see it off in a positive way! A lot has changed in the last two years, we have opened three more charity shops to support our work, which is great. The shops aren’t able to generate the income we need yet though, so we really need your help since we can’t currently do our other normal community and events fundraising.

Other things have changed as well. Due to Covid, our community support workers provide most of their support by telephone or online and have learned how to safely visit members at home, where that is still necessary. We’ve gotten really good at setting up virtual befriending and support groups using group telephone and video calls! We’ve continued to take on the challenge of helping people with sight loss in spite of restrictions and we challenge you to join us.

Pick a fun challenge for yourself and get your friends and family to sponsor you. Set up a fundraising page, you can follow this link https://dorsetblind.org.uk/help-us/fundraising/challenge-events/ to the fundraising page on our website. Then, go for it! Raise £10 or £102 or more, it all helps!

Some ideas:

• Walk for 102 minutes
• Hula hoop 102 times
• Don’t speak for 10.2 hours (that’s 10 hours and 12 minutes)
• Host a virtual coffee morning
• Host a Zoom fancy dress/Halloween party

Make sure you keep us up to date with your ideas and fundraising achievements and tag Dorset Blind Association on social media.
Facebook – @Dorset Blind Association
Instagram – @dorset.blind
Twitter – @DorsetBlind

To follow our Birthday Challenge click here

Our CEO Jonathan Holyhead recently spoke to Radio Solent about our virtual befriending services and the great work our volunteers and members are doing to support each other.

Listen to the interview below:

What have our very own Fab Four been up to? A recent survey by one of our sister charities showed that of almost 1,000 blind and visually impaired people only 17% of respondents were contacted by their local sensory team during the first ten weeks of the pandemic lockdown. We would expect similar numbers here.

However, our Fab Four took a pro-active approach very early on – contacting people that we knew to see how they were coping and what we could do to help. Our Community Support Workers have made more than 1500 calls in this period, and are still going strong!
As a result we were able to help people get the support they needed and set up regular contact using phone buddies, telephone chat groups and Zoom.

Have you been one of the people we reached out to?

Freddie is doing his Duke of Edinburgh Bronze Award this year and as part of that, has ridden his bike more than 300km throughout the summer holidays to raise funds for Dorset Blind Association.  He smashed his fundraising goal of £750 by raising an amazing £1570! His support team, Mum (Kate) and brother (Alexander) also deserve kudos for cycling along with him. We are so appreciative of his effort on our behalf, especially since we cannot undertake our usual fundraising activities. 

If you want to take on a challenge of your own click on the link. https://dorsetblind.org.uk/help-us/fundraising-2/challenge-events/

From 1 August 2020, the concessions scheme for over 75’s is changing. If you or someone you live with is blind (severely sight impaired), regardless of their age, you could receive a 50% discount on the cost of a TV licence. If you receive Pension credit or Pension Savings credit you should be eligible for a 100% discount. If you are unsure, please call our benefits specialist Leah on 07789997620 who can do a calculation for you.

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All four of our charity shops are now back open and have been extremely busy in the first few days, especially at Southbourne and Lower Parkstone.

A huge “thank you” to all customers who have visited the shops and especially for observing our social distancing guidelines so well.

Thank you also to people who have offered donations directly to the shops. We have been overwhelmed with these so are having to limit what we take into the shops each day, which we hope people understand.

If you would like to donate items and want to take these direct to a shop it’s probably best at the moment to phone the shops first and ask if they are able to accept what you are offering – that way you are saved a wasted journey if the shops is already full on donations for that day.

Thank you again for your support, it really is appreciated.