This campaign has now closed
Oxfordshire Association for the Blind (OAB) plan to build a new Resource Centre to improve training opportunities for blind and partially sighted people - young and old - who live in and around Oxfordshire. It represents a bigger, better, safer, and more cost efficient facility than the small portakabin which we are currently forced to use (at an annual rent charge of £7,000+) The Centre will vastly improve the advice, training and support services for visually impaired people which we already offer, as well as opening up the possibilities of providing new Awareness Training courses for the local community in general – aimed at businesses and key service providers (such as G. P. surgeries and residential and care homes, for example) and of proving new, face-to-face counselling sessions for blind or partially sighted people who are struggling to come to terms with their impairment.
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Situation
OAB’s core service involves offering advice, reassurance and guidance with daily living skills. We provide help and assistance with a wide range of visual aids and equipment (such talking watches or camera-based reading devices, for example) as part of this service. Presently, this service is based in a portakabin in OAB’s car park. Cold and cramped – lacking the space required to offer the services which have been requested of us, and which we want to offer – the portakabin is not suitable for our service users’ ambitions, or our own. With four thin walls, poor insulation and high rental costs (roughly £7,000 a year) the portakabin also represents an unnecessary drain on our resources and an inefficient use of our funders’ investment. The new Resource Centre will be bigger, better, more welcoming, and much more cost efficient. The ground floor will be embodied by specially set-aside IT and Kitchen areas (separated by a sound-proof partition), which will enable the OAB team to offer new training courses in the use of technology and cooking skills. Both of these courses have been requested of us by our service users, as well as by the many and various groups representing visually impaired people which we consult with (these demands are matched by the suggestions of various research papers such as those published by the Thomas Pocklington Trust, for example). Total costs for the project come to £600,000 of which we have so far raised just over £300,000 so far. It is our aim to have raised at least £450,000 by March 2010 when we plan to begin building. Any help or support you may choose to offer will be greatly appreciated, and we would work hard to reward your kindness and trust by delivering an excellent Resource Centre: encouraging a better local community in which blind and partially sighted people can play a more active role. Thank you for your consideration.