Deaf People Together
We are very excited to announce that we have received funding from Bristol City Council’s Bristol Impact Fund. This funding has enabled us to employ a Community Development Officer who is tasked with a new project called, ‘Deaf People Together: In charge of our own future’. The project is based on a 4-year plan running from 2021 to 2025.
The main purpose of the Bristol Impact Fund is to grow the power of local communities that experience the greatest inequality. The aim is to help local communities to:
- Self-organise and pursue collective priorities
- Access trusted, empowering support
- Build strong organisations taking forward community priorities
- Collaborate and bring about meaningful changes
Our project aims to improve engagement between Bristol’s Deaf community, hard of hearing people, and the Centre for Deaf and Hard of Hearing People (CfD). We are looking to support Deaf and hard of hearing people to recognise the people, places, and groups within them. We intend to build on these community assets to enable deaf and hard of hearing people to be more self-organised, set up their own groups and to be independently managed. In addition to the project, we will work with Deaf and hard of hearing people on exploring the relationship between themselves, hearing people and organisations/services, with the aim of alleviating communication barriers that Deaf and hard of hearing people experience in Bristol.
An example of this project in action is feedback collected from Deaf and hard of hearing people that they would like a coffee morning to take place on 1st and 3rd Tuesday of each month at Bristol Beacon. We have set this up and we are now working closely with the Bristol Loaf team (who runs the café at Bristol Beacon) to ensure that the Loaf staff receive deaf awareness training so they can improve their engagement with the group.
We are looking forward to supporting Deaf and hard of hearing people who wish to set up their own community groups and activities, and work towards our goal of making Bristol a more inclusive city for Deaf and hard of hearing people.
Deaf and hard of hearing people are at the heart of why the Centre for Deaf and Hard of Hearing People exist, and with active engagement from the community we can make a positive impact now and for future generations in Bristol and the surrounding areas.
Our community development officer, Mark Gill, is happy to discuss any queries that you have regarding this project. You can contact Mark by email: Mark@cfd.org.uk or by SMS/WhatsApp/Facetime: 07734 830 440.
