August 2001
1. Tutorial TrainingPatricia Webb has continued to give tutorial training to WAACIS tutors who wish to learn Jaws to enable them to assist blind and partially sighted people. This scheme has been hugely successful. We will eventually have 16 tutors able to deliver these courses.
2. Lottery Seminar
As previously reported WAACIS is making an application to the Community Fund for funding from the National Lottery. The Community Fund holds regular seminars to advise applicants how to fill in these complicated forms. The seminar was held on August the 14th and attended by Anthony Wigram. It is extremely well organised. The presenter, Samantha Rennie, took a great deal of trouble to explain the criteria governing the Community Fund’s Policy and also outlined to us very fully the funds available and how they are distributed.
As a result of this seminar our Lottery Bid has been entirely revised. We have now made a much smaller application for £60,000 under what is known as the “Medium Grant Scheme”. The application is for an additional PR –Development Organiser. As is constantly stated in these notes our main problem is getting WAACIS known to the disabled community and therefore increasing the number of applicants who wish to use the WAACIS service. The seminar and subsequent application were extremely worthwhile and we greatly hope that our efforts will not be in vain.
3.Meeting with James Bethell and Jason Van Hefton of the Ministry of Sound.
These 2 young men are extremely professional and have a thorough knowledge of public relations and media interaction. The purpose of the meeting was to get ideas in order to build up the visibility of WAACIS.
Jason suggested that our richest resource was of course our own graduate students. He suggested that a scheme should be started which would encourage graduate students to give our name and address to people who they felt ought to know about WAACIS and others who could benefit from our service. They are going to put this plan into action. In fact David Hart is already working with former graduates and we intend to build up this side of the information effort.
