Flourish House does a lot of Outreach in the Community and in this Blog we hear from a few member who attended a Glasgow Disability Alliance; Disability Rights Conference in late January 2024, 2 members volunteered to manage the stall, K brought the tall Flourish House signage & Stuart had leaflets, forms, badges & Jelly babies.
K & I caught the first part of the conference which was the Purple Poncho Players, A few other members were at the conference too, it was very good, then, we had lunch and ran the stall, we gave out at least 15 forms & leaflets.
Members talk about it more below:
K-
An excellent idea as many people were encouraged to come and ask about Flourish because of the sweets on display.
Only one person who asked about Flourish walked away when I told them it was a mental health charity.
Everyone else wanted to know either more about it or what sort of subjects it included. To me this showed that everyone else had mental health issues themselves (or their family members had).
It was a terrific, relaxed, thoroughly enjoyable day. Let’s hope people want to come on a tour.
Stuart.-
I was worried about doing this as it was 5 hrs long & the burns night was after
But on the way I bought wine gums & jelly babies for the stall.
I turned up & met up with a few Flourish members who were there & sat with them at a table, The Purple Poncho Players were really good & fellow member (& board member Tony) was performing on stage with them, the GDA video afterwards was great too and Tony was also featured in the video, It was really good.
K came over just before lunch & we set up the stall & had lunch (Lunch was delicious)
K was a natural at speaking and I struggled with anxiety & a sore chest but despite this I went around all the other stalls to chat to them.
The stall next to ours was Police Scotland & I enjoyed speaking to the police lady. I said I know a guy who was a driver for the police force who did doughnuts in his car all day.
Another stall holder asked me a true or false question about counting with my fingers which I got right but managed to lose count when I tried it myself.
Across the room there was a fuel poverty charity so I chatted to them and they laughed out loud when I said my meter was rigged (I was only joking).
After I got some fresh air and came back but my chest was still tight, so I sat at the stall & chatted to a few people, one of them was a girl I knew from SunnyG Radio.
I really hope we get some new members.
Laiwah –
It was very interesting to see different organisations & how they talk about the different democracies and disability rights, the food was nice but it was a shame they had no shortbread biscuits.