Owners
What it's all about
We want to increase the awareness of disabilities for students by having a fun and informative day to try and break down some barriers that exist in todays society. The day will involve having activities to raise awareness, such as: experiencing different disabilities like hearing impairments, visual impairments, as well as physical disabilities. We also aim to teach basic makaton signing. We have a local school who are willing to get on board and come along to help, as well as local charities and awareness organisations. We thought we could also include the children from the school in the day by letting them help with posters and art and then inviting them to a tea party or similar on the day.
What's needed to make it a reality
Already met with Darren. Definitely need funding to make it the best day possible.
Available actions
Fans of this idea
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Ruth (Student Involvement Mentor@ Loughborough College)
Junction49er
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Lauraliz
Helper
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Shelley Cristofaro
Junction49er
Comments
It sounds like you have really thought through the Disability Awareness Day and your experience with Action Ashmount will really benefit you whilst planning this event and raising awareness of disabilities amongst your fellow students.
Good to hear that you have already been in contact with Darren. Junction49 is where young people can develop their own ideas for positive change in the community and students who wish to develop a voluntary project to benefit the community can access up to £750 to turn your idea into a reality. Loughborough is one of 12 Universities who are taking part in the scheme where students can access funding, training and support from Darren (Loughborough’s very own Volunteer Support Officer) to help you get your project up and running. Check out:
http://www.junction49.co.uk/university/62/loughborough_students_union/
You should get in contact with Rachel as she recently ran a Disability Awareness Day
http://www.junction49.co.uk/idea/1967/accessibility_campaign/
For those wanting to find out more about Makaton signing, here is a link to the Makaton charity website http://www.makaton.org/
I also found this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYwbbFRMFTY on YouTube which is of the Goldilocks nursery rhyme with signing. Perhaps you could pass this on at the day? Could be quite a fun activity to coordinate with the children from the local school you mentioned. Also this ‘beginners guide’ video may be worth taking a look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HS6i08AZc2M If you like these, you can post them as ‘videos’ on your idea.
I really like your idea to get the children involved in poster making; it would be really nice if your publicity posters were designed by school children ahead of the event.
Have you thought about dates and potential venues?
I’m looking forward to hearing how this idea progresses. Report Abuse
Wow you certainly have one action packed day planned for next week. It sounds like it's going to be absolutely monumental and will no doubt create a huge amount of awareness with everything that you've got planned. Hopefully this will provide a really good basis for the project to build on in future years and run annually :-)
Good Luck and looking forward to hearing all about the day next week. Don't forget you can upload photos too :-)
Sarah
Report Abuse
Just want to wish you both lots of luck for today. I hope the weather is nice in Loughborough and you get a good turn out. I look forward to reading your next installment of your diary to hear all about how it went :-)
Sarah Report Abuse
Congrats on such a fantastic project, your photos look amazing! I hear the Vice-Chancellor was very impressed with the day and if this can continue as an annual event, what a great legacy for you to leave at Loughborough. I look forward to reading your next diary entry!
Congratulations once again!
Sarah Report Abuse
My name is Ruth and I work with Jo Graver at Loughborough College. How did the day go?
If you did this again in the Student's Union for next academic year, I would be really interested in helping our students get involved / helping out.
Many thanks
Ruth Report Abuse
The day went really well thank you and we are definitely planning on doing it again next year so thank you very much for the comment - it would be great to have students from the college involved!!
When planning for next year gets going again I will definitely get in touch with you :)
Thanks again,
Lizzie Report Abuse
Manuel Alonso is going to be the new head of DANS (the Uni support service). He is really nice and helpful and I am sure would be able to advise. He used to work across here, but is about to leave for the job at the UNI. I am sure we could meet with him and involve him. RNIB would like to have a presence as well I am sure. One of the things we are looking at potentially doing is like a learner voice DVD, where students explain a little of what life is like with a disability and what 'non disabled' students might need to know in terms of ettiquette / consideration. That might be a good project to happen across all 3 institutions and would help students who have not previously encountered disability very much, to feel a bit more relaxed around disabled students and also to be more considerate. If we could get such a DVD off the ground, it could get used in tutorials for our 16-19 yr old students.
Oops that probably goes in the ideas category!
Definately stay in touch and will team up with you next year Lizzie - thanks for getting back to me.
Ruth Report Abuse
Just read your comment and you're right it certainly sounds like a good project idea. If you have some students who would potentially be interested in taking this idea up then you can always get them to add it as an idea to Junction49 and we can support them in helping to take this idea forward and if they need forward we can look into that too :-)
Sarah Report Abuse
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