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Why it was needed

After speaking to Friends Action North East (FANE) - a charity that champions friendships for adults with learning disabilities - I realised that there is a shortage of things for people with learning disabilities to do at times when other people socialise such as in the evening or at the weekend. There are also little opportunities to date and develop relationships. This made me want to develop opportunities for people with learning disabilities to socialise and in particular date and develop communication skills.

What's being done

The Student Volunteer Co-ordinator (Lauren Prince) at university helped me to develop my project plan and provided training for me to be able to set up my project. I did some research in to speed dating and liaised with FANE to improve the plan for the project and applied for funding from Junction 49.
I was then able to make a start with support from Lauren and from Samantha Sanderson (the staff member from Junction 49).
I had a meeting with some of the people who use FANE to see what they would want from the event and then set about creating scorecards for the speed dating, contact forms, purchasing decorations for the event, and recruiting volunteers.
The Krocodile Krew agreed to do the Djing for the disco for us and designed and distributed flyers for the event. It was great to work in conjunction with other organisations.
After the first event, I was supported in evaluating the project and Samantha gave me training on leading the next event. So far we have held another two speed dating and disco evenings and there has been improvement each time. At the last event we had a tuck shop, competition and great disco with 31 people speed dating and lots more for the disco. There was a much more even distribution of male and female speed daters!

There have been a few challenges on the way - mainly trying to get even numbers of male and female speed daters and in registering people for the event - but there has been a great improvement througout the three events.

How it started

The format of the project is that we get flyers out for the events - designed by the Krocodile Krew. Then people wishing to speed date telephone to confirm their place and provide contact details. This has helped us to get more even numbers of males and females and know how many people to expect. On the night, the attendees approach our welcome desk (manned by volunteers) to get their scorecard and a sticker with their name on - red for speed daters, green for the disco, yellow for support workers. Then the speed dating starts with three minutes for each date. One thing that did prove useful was making laminated cards with vaious pictures on to jog people's memory if they were stuck for something to say. At the end we collected the scorecards and the disco began!

After the event, I worked out who had made a match and sent out letters informing people and to everyone else to thank them for coming. They then had the contact details for FANE who could support them in making a date.

The other volunteers have played an important role in welcoming and registering people on the night, running the tuck shop and competition, and helping people fill in scorecards, and socialising.

More

After some further project leader training delivered by Lauren, I will set some new objectives and would like to make the project in to a sustainable ongoing event and recruit a team of volunteers to help expand the project to more social activities in the next academic year.

I have thoroughly enjoyed leading the project as I have developed a range of new skills, met many new people and feel a sense of achievement from making a difference in the community. I would highly recommend volunteering to everyone!