With our Exploring the Barriers to Vounteering event now less than a month away we wanted to make an effort to point out a few of the groups and organisations out there that are dedicated to supporting members of our communities in dealing with and overcoming many of the same life challenges that are the focus of many supported volunteering projects that we meet. To kick off the process we’d like to introduceto an organisation that we  had hoped to have involved in the Exploring Barriers event but the gods of diary & event management conspired against us. Still we feel that they are a worthy cause and a resource worth knowing about.

Action for Blind People is a part of  the RNIB Group and has set out a straight forward mission for itself:

To inspire change and create opportunities to enable blind and partially sighted people to have equal voice and equal choice.

They offer support and advice for blind or partially sighted people on anything from finding appropriate housing to applying for benefits to finding the right life aids. They can even help a person work through how to maintain or adjust their employment situation after sight loss  or consider how to move on to self-employment. You can even follow them on twitter at @actionforblind.

For our purposes here and in light of our upcoming conference we’d most like to point out two things. First, if your project is looking to work with visually impaired people and it’s new ground for you then Action for the Blind is just the kind of organisation you should be speaking to. No only do they offer Visual Awareness training but they have several regional offices so expert advice on how best to engage may be just around the corner.

Secondly, they help to put a human face to the needs & frustrations experienced by blind and partially sighted people on their blog. We suggest that you start with these entries:

• Sandi Wassmer’s Debunking a few myths about what it means to be registered blind
• Shezan Hirjee’s Comfortably Blind – A Journey in Three Parts (Part Two, Part Three)
• Kevin Nuttall’s Fit notes are a coming

These are articulate and informed expressions of what it means to deal with life when facing such challenging barriers and are informative reading for anyone working in supported volunteering even if that work is dealing with something other than visual impairment.