Giving Voice

Sunday 28 July 2013

A Little Giving Voice Champion

You may have noticed in previous blog entries that my 7-year-old niece has been a keen supporter of Giving Voice since I started campaigning. She has attended events I have organised and has drawn numerous Giving Voice pictures for me (some of which I have shared in this blog).

Toni is a keen dancer and recently won the British and Scottish championship title for her age with her duo partner Leah. They have been in their local newspaper as they are going to Glasgow next month to compete for the world title.

When I was looking after Toni recently she did this picture which I thought was simply too cute not to share!

Dance Geeks - Toni Anne Seago

Giving Voice - www.givingvoiceuk.org


Wishing Toni and Leah lots of luck next month and I'm looking forward to seeing them dance and helping them raise some funds tonight! :-)

Saturday 27 July 2013

Summer excitement!

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.


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!
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!)

Tuesday 2 July 2013

From April to July - where did the time go??

It has been a while since I last updated my blog (April) so I thought it was about time I gave it some attention. Life has been quite busy recently and although I haven't had time to blog, I have still been Giving Voice, so here's a little update :-)

A few weeks ago I went along to an event in Gosforth which aimed to raise funds for the North East Trust for Aphasia (NETA). For those of you that don't know, NETA is a charity which is based at Newcastle University and supports people with Aphasia (communication difficulties following a stroke or other brain injury). It also aims to raise awareness of the impact Aphasia has on the lives of individuals and their family and friends. If you would like more information about NETA visit their website here

The donkey derby was a cinema race night allowing people to place bets on horses before watching the race on screen. I won a prize in the raffle but sadly none of my horses were winners! Before the event I sold horses for one race to my family (owner of the winning horse won a prize) and we named this race Giving Voice Gallop!

For those of you that do not know, NETA won a Giving Voice award last year for local partnership of the year, so they brought their lovely award along to display (for more information about NETAs own celebration of this award, see July Bulletin page 9). I also made a quick speech on the night to remind people about Giving Voice and to inform anybody that hadn't already heard of it. We also put leaflets and pens on the tables and encouraged people to take these away and pass them on. New patron of NETA, Lord Shipley, attended on the night and made a short speech. An enjoyable night was had by all and we raised money for NETA in the process!

On the subject of NETA, my sister and brother-in-law are both running the Great North Run for them  this year and like the previous two years I will be on the sidelines sporting my Giving Voice t-shirt and handing out jelly babies to the runners. To find out about how this went last year click here. We bought our first box of jelly babies last week! To sponsor Joanne and Craig and help them support NETA you can visit their just giving page here



Thanks for reading, hopefully it won't be so long before I update this again!

Speech and Language Therapy Transforms Lives!

#GivingVoiceUK