We are very pleased to announce that we have been awarded funding for a major new volunteering initiative: our ‘SocialEyes’ project! We are even more excited to launch this project with a series of short films starring some of our current volunteers and service users. Here is a sneak peek of what we’ve been up to.
You can enjoy the rest of our ‘SocialEyes Stories’ on our SocialEyes pages. We have created two pages all about the project tailored to different audiences – so if you are interested from a volunteer’s perspective, click here or, if you would like to find out more about requesting volunteer support, go to this page.
We already have over thirty volunteer requests around the county for everything from swimming to knitting! To find out who is waiting for a volunteer in your area, go to our SocialEyes Opportunities page.
Why do we need the SocialEyes project?
The ‘Building Connections Fund’ which made this project possible was created by the government, the National Lottery Community Fund and the Co-op Foundation to tackle loneliness across England. We are one of 126 organisations to have benefited from this funding and will be doing our part for people with sight loss.
As research has shown that nearly half of people with sight loss feel ‘moderately’ or ‘completely’ cut off from people and things around them, we have designed the SocialEyes project to address this. It builds upon the befriending and home visiting roles that many of our volunteers have given their time to over the years.
Jenny Gage, our Chief Executive Officer, says, “We are so grateful to the Buildings Connections Fund and, of course, to HM Government and National Lottery players, for making this work possible. This sort of service is so important and without a dedicated pocket of money we simply couldn’t take it forward”.
We’d also like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who was involved in the SocialEyes videos – from our venues to the film stars themselves, and of course the Flying Machine Media film crew.
If you’ve been inspired and want to find out more, follow the links to the SocialEyes pages above or get in touch with us via our Contact Us page.
The SocialEyes volunteering service has been made possible thanks to funding from both Her Majesty’s Government (HMG) and National Lottery players.
