Big plans for Belfast

This guest blog comes from Alison Bennett, District Team Support Worker in Northern Ireland.

Organising a big event is always a challenge, and our Go for 80 activity  has been no exception. There have been a few hair-raising moments but we’re now very lucky to have secured a great venue and our day is really shaping up to be a good one.

We met with the events director at Belfast City Hall last Friday afternoon and have now confirmed the City Hall for 1 October from 11 - 3pm. We’ll be inviting people to “walk 80ft in my shoes” along an obstacle course with the sort of street clutter blind and partially sighted people have to navigate everyday.

We’ll provide a sighted guide, a white cane and blindfold and let people see just how scary it can be to walk down a street without sight, negotiating badly parked cars, bins and bikes.

We’re planing to have trading stalls, a Christmas gift stand, an information tent and a wedding favour display: Guide Dogs in Northern Ireland started providing wedding favours a year ago – it’s been going really well and so far we’ve done about eight weddings and have about 50 people interested for weddings in 2012.

We’ve also asked the Lord Mayor to come and he’s said yes! We’re hoping he’s going to try the blindfold obstacle course and we’re also planning to get the press along. It’s all go – we’ll keep you posted.

Comments

Tony, 6:54pm Fri 9 Sep 2011:

Go Belfast team! I have no doubt this will be a well organised, and well attended event. Was a real pleasure to work on the 75th, with Bark in the Park. The 80th in Belfast will be a great event.

Ally, 10:39am Fri 7 Oct 2011:

Thanks for following our progress everyone. Its hard to believe our big bash was almost a week ago now. This time last week we were running around like headless chickens putting things in boxes and loading up cars to the brim. We all arrived at City Hall at 9.30am on Saturday to put up marquees - which was like a team building exercise in iteself lol. But thankfully we got set up well before the rain started. The Lord Mayor arrived around half 11 and was taken around our "street clutter" obstacle course with buddy dog Petra and her mummy Jacqueline Dowey, GDMI. He really enjoyed the experience and got chatting to some guide dog owners and volunteers before having his photo taken with different people. You should be able to see these on the website. The morning went very well with quite a few people - especially children - taking the obstacle course which was a great way to raise awareness of what its like to struggle with a visual impairment and why its important not to leave random things lying about the street and the impact this can have on someone with a sight loss. We had a steady footfall round our trading tents and information tent and the grand total raised for the day was £613.19. An excellent total and credit to all involved. We had Jim Masterson, GDO there on his spin bike - Jim will be cycling around 8 locations in Northern Ireland this week for guide dog week - a total of over 800 miles! We call him Ultra fit Jim as he always has some sort of crazy physical challenge on the go. He recently did a tandem cycle from Belfast to Donegal. At each location he has been this week there have been volunteers out with collection buckets and on some days this has been as much as £400. Well done all! We also want to thank Subway who provided free 6" subs for us all at lunch time while we huddled in our tents to get out of the driving rain which started about half 12. We eventually packed up around 2.15 as the patch of grass we were on gradually developed into a mudslide! A good day had by all and a great chance to get the exhibition vehicle some coverage in Belfast City Centre again. Happy Birthday Guide Dogs. We hope all the other events around the UK have gone well too. From all at Belfast!

Jonathan, 7:11pm Wed 4 Jan 2012:

I'm looking for some Guide Dog Wedding Favours - preferably some pins we can give to our guests, does anyone know of anywhere I could get such a thing?

jenifer - Guide Dogs, 12:21pm Thu 5 Jan 2012:

We can certainly help you with wedding favours. They can be viewed in the photos on our facebook page Guide Dogs in Northern Ireland.
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.436107048423.236264.115378993423&type=1

The person to contact is: 0845 3727 402 or email kathryn.peart@guidedogs.org.uk

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