Our founder Suzanne Roberts spent several months reaching out to the local community and listening to views and ideas about whether a new charity was needed and what kind of services should be delivered. She formed a committee with five other local people, all with a shared passion and drive to make North Staffordshire a better place to live for people living with sight loss.
We registered with the Charity Commission on 31st January 2018, secured our first funding from Seedbed Christian Charity in April 2018 and began delivering our first services in May 2018.
Over the next 18 months as a small team of volunteers we provided advice and information around independent living, support with applications for welfare benefits and concessions along with social and peer support groups, leading to many positive outcomes for those supported.
We also held our first events including our first Annual Awareness Day which brought together 29 local and national organisations who came to share information about their services and to demonstrate equipment and technology. More than 100 members of the community attended and the event was a great success.
Earlier this year we were thrilled to receive a substantial grant from the national lottery for our two-year Independence and Wellbeing Project. This grant will allow us to extend our reach, to develop our existing services and to launch a number of new services. It will also allow us to hire our first staff members and to hire an office space for administration purposes. We are very excited about the transformational impact that this grant will have for our organisation and for the community that we support.
You can find details of all of our services in the ‘services’ section of our website and find dates of upcoming events and activities in our ‘events calendar’ however if you have any questions at all please do not hesitate to Get in touch.