It’s two years this month since I started my blog (and it doesn't seem like two minutes!) so I thought I’d update it again before the end of the month.
This week I had a productive meeting about arranging an afternoon tea at Crossroads Café, Ashington to raise awareness of Giving Voice, Speech and Language Therapy and Aphasia whilst raising some funds for the North East Trust for Aphasia (NETA). Anyone who knows me knows how much I love tea so this is a very exciting event for me, for a very worthy cause. Tickets have already started selling for what is sure to be a lovely afternoon! For more information about this event click HERE. We will have a little quiz on the tables to get people engaging in the information as well as having a little fun and we are also going to hold a tombola to raise some extra funds.
If you know anyone who owns or runs a café could you organise something similar to raise awareness of communication and swallowing difficulties and the value of speech and language therapy. Perhaps you could raise funds for a local charity which supports people with communication or swallowing needs. If you’d like any further information about how to organize an event like this, please do not hesitate to get in touch.
Earlier this month I attended the second of the online ‘GIG’ meeting – the Giving Voice Innovation Group were full of enthusiasm for the campaign. If you haven’t ‘met’ the group yet – take a look at this page on the Giving Voice website and get in touch with your local member to see what’s going on in your area! Also, don’t forget there’s still time to enter a photo into the Lights Camera Campaign competition – click here for further details – why not do a Giving Voice activity and submit a photo from the event?!
Last month I attended the North East Speech and Language Therapy Research Symposium, where I learnt lots of interesting information about research being carried out in the North East. Some of the current Newcastle Students held a Giving Voice stand with leaflets and pens etc and I spoke to them about the interest people had in the stand. They commented that lots of people thought the ‘Seven Signs’ leaflets were fantastic and took them to hand to schools or GPs. I think distributing these leaflets to GPs is a great idea so I am going to meet with SLTs in Northumberland to discuss how we might be able to do this. If you have picked up a ‘Seven Signs’ leaflet at any Giving Voice events, why not pass it onto someone who would benefit from the information.
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| Thank you to SLT student, Dominique Hill, for the Giving Voice photos from the NE SLT research Symposium |
It’s only 50 days until the Great North Run (so social media informs me – I haven’t counted the days personally!) – we have quite a collection of jelly babies now to hand out to the runners on the day (whilst wearing Giving Voice t-shirts). My sister and brother-in-law are running for NETA so I will be looking out for them (and other people I know that are running) on the day. If you are able to support the fantastic work of NETA please sponsor my sister and brother-in-law here. I’m looking forward to going along and supporting the event – it’s always a fantastic atmosphere!
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| Our Jelly Babies Collection so far! |
Well, I’m off to enjoy some sunshine now – hope you can too! (Before you do, why not share my blog to help spread the word that Speech and Language Therapy Transforms Lives!)
