Club Members learn Braille
Supporting and volunteering for projects connected with Vision / Eyesight would appear to be a thread that has run through the club since 1948.
In June 1948 just over a year after the club was founded, the then Club President Miss Muriel Preece received a letter from the secretary to the Chief Librarian at the National Library for the Blind in Manchester asking for help.
Without any hesitation the members decided to respond and immediately invited someone to come and speak to them at their July Social Meeting. No one was available at such short notice so without more ado they cancelled their social meeting and took themselves off on a train to Manchester to visit the library for themselves.
The outcome of this visit was that the library promised that an instructor would come across from Manchester to give members their first lesson in transcribing print into Braille – the club secretary was responsible for arranging her train journey and making sure she arrived on time.
We have no record of how many members were involved in this training but minutes of a later meeting record that the Club president gave an update of progress being made by members, and that a further machine was being presented to the club by Mr Crowther – who was proprietor of the Club meeting venue and this news and I quote ‘was received with great applause by the club!’
Nothing more is recorded about this project until October 1950 when two members gave an account of an event, they had attended by invitation, to a Braille Reading Contest in Whalley Range High School where they had been and again I quote ‘were impressed by the happy atmosphere and the age range of those competing – from young children in Elementary School to older competitors, and that prizes had been presented by Mrs Bromley Davenport – I think we can be certain that she was wearing a very smart hat and of course gloves!
There are no further references as to how long this project continued – no Programme Focus Reports to refer to in those day! But there are references later on to the Club giving financial support to the work of St Dunstan’s – now known as Blind Veterans UK. This was a charity set up set up to provide training, rehabilitation and lifelong support to those blinded in the First World War. Interestingly their headquarters were for a short time in Bayswater Road.
Further down the line, The Club eagerly supported the International Presidents project working with Sight Savers.
Another major service project undertaken by the club was in the 90’s and into the 2000’s when members were on a rota of volunteer readers for the Runcorn Talking Newspaper. This was a weekly commitment and to this day – well at least until Lockdown when the service stopped- one of our members is a reserve reader for this project.
Those wonderful eager and determined women who went before us are an inspiration to us all and as a club we are so proud of their achievements.