Christine, Janet and Angela who live with greater independence in Middlesbrough enabled by ubu, decided to raise funds to contribute to Macmillan Cancer Support. It’s a cause they feel strongly about and wanted to support. They wanted to find an unusual way to have fun and to raise some money in the process and so they organised a "murder mystery" themed event.
The ladies invited their friends and neighbours along to try and solve the ‘crime’. Everyone was a suspect. “We had lots of fun while trying to work who did it. It was great to do something with other people in our community and best of all we raised £114.00 for Macmillan and between us we eventually solved the crime together!”
In Louth, East Midlands, a group of people served by ubu wanted to celebrate the annual Comic Relief event in March and chose to hold a BIG fancy Dress. “Friends came from all over the area and we had a great time catching up with each other”, says Sarah who was the life and soul of the karaoke singing. “I really enjoyed it and sang my favourite songs from ‘Frozen’ for our guests.” The party atmosphere was made even better because people came along in all sorts of fancy dress. “We had fairies, Shrek, full-sized fruits, a Mad Hatter, a Frozen Queen, a Cow Girl, a Neon Girl, the Wizard of OZ and some people even came dressed in their pyjamas! It was fabulous! We asked people we know from all around to come along from the local Resource Centre, where we go to discos and other events. It was really nice to share the fun with them too. We all had a fantastic time and we raised £101.50!! What a great result!”
Graham, from Scarborough shares a house with three other gentlemen, enabled to live together with more independence by ubu. “Over the past couple of months we’ve been collecting vouchers through a local supermarket every time we did our shopping. We talked about who we would like to donate our vouchers to and found out more about local organisations and groups that were collecting them.
The vouchers can be exchanged for things that can be useful. We decided to donate our vouchers to a local children’s nursery just around the corner from where we live. We all walk past the nursery when we are going into town and we often say a “hello” to the staff and children there.”
Graham organised and collected the vouchers from his friends and counted them. “We had 160 vouchers! We took them over to the nursery to hand them over. The lady who we gave them to was so happy to have them and she said ‘thank you’ over and over again! She told us that our vouchers would help to the children they look after. We all felt really good about being able to support and make a real difference to other people.”
Roger from Spalding has also been making a positive contribution by supporting his local primary school at a recent fundraising community event. He helped to organise a cake stall which he says he really enjoyed doing. Roger was then invited to visit the school and join one of the children’s cookery lessons so that he could see what they do. Her says “I’m looking forward to visiting them again.”
Roger is now acting as an ambassador to help the children to become aware of and get an understanding of people with learning disabilities.
