New Beginnings Club (nbc)
Nbc is a group for adults with a learning and physical disabilities but unlike most other organisations that support people with physical and learning disabilities, nbc is run entirely by disabled people.
Members are the Trustees, they make the decisions on their priorities and the activities they want to do with the support of volunteers – a part time event support worker and a part time administrator.
Nbc promotes positive attitudes and tackles stigmas by working towards respecting, protecting and fulfilling every member’s human right to live a life free from discrimination.
For the last 9 months Connecting Equalities has been supporting the nbc to gain confidence and learn skills to be more involved in not only nbc, but their wider community and take more control of their own lives.
Through Connecting Equalities, the members who wanted to be part of their newsletter received some training on how to use Canva, they then designed a template for the newsletter.
Initially meeting with them monthly to pull the newsletter content together and support the members; this has now moved to every 2 months where we only give support to do the finishing touches as the members are now more confident and comfortable with both the programme, and what the members like to know about and see in the newsletter.
Since the start of the year, the nbc members have:
- Planned more overnight trips
- Set up subgroups
- Reviewed their membership
- Looked into more sustainable funding
Nbc members also came to Outside the Box’s Parliamentary reception at the end of March. This was the first time some of them had ever spoken in public before and showed how much their confidence has grown to not only do the speech, but then to speak with other guests and MSPs who they didn’t know about nbc and what they do.
Through the conversations they had at Parliament there is more interest in their model and how it can be replicated in other areas. It is early days for this, and we can’t wait to see what they do next!