Sporty Spring
During the spring term, I visited the Hunston Brownies to help the girls earn their Disability Awareness badge. I did the section on physical disability and on two other evenings they learned about visual and hearing impairments.
When I arrived I talked to the girls about my experiences of being a Brownie, and showed them some photographs. On my enrolment day in 1990, I chose to take my promise standing up in my calipers, which was a good lead into a discussion on mobility aids. I took along two manual wheelchairs to the meeting and the Brownies had great fun racing each other the length of the hall. Brown Owl and I also designed an obstacle course for the girls to complete in teams of three. One girl sat in the wheelchair while the others acted as helpers, pushing and guiding the wheelchair through the cones, over a rough carpet, through the doors and the biggest challenge, up, along and down the stage! The main difficulty they encountered was getting the wheelchair safely up and down with the passenger staying in the chair (adults were close by to help)! To end the meeting we talked about ways to make buildings more wheelchair friendly. I also set the Brownies their homework to design a poster about the Paralympics, and I was amazed at how many sports they could tell me about before starting this task!
A few weeks later I went back and gave the girls a questionnaire to fill in to see what they could remember from my first visit. The question they found the hardest was how to make a place easier for somebody in a wheelchair, so I hope I can go back to talk to them a bit more about this. I also gave out some prizes for the homework; I was really pleased with the efforts that the girls had gone to. Kory aged 7 won second prize for her creative art work which can be seen on the front cover. Before giving out the badges, Anita (Guiding Disability Advisor) and I talked to the girls about other types of disability. Anita and I are going to work together on facts about disabilities children might come across and put them into language understandable at Brownie level, so that hopefully anyone doing the Disability Awareness badge will receive the same information.
On Sunday 25th March I ‘ran’ the Sport Relief Mile at Graylingwell Park in Chichester with my friends Sheryl, Jennah (11) and Kory (7). It was a beautiful sunny morning and there were over 600 people and dogs there! Jennah and Kory ran off ahead of Sheryl and me, and speedy Jennah lapped us before we had turned the first corner of the rectangular route! The mile took me around 20 minutes so next time we will be entering the three mile course. I was slightly disappointed that I was the only wheelchair user who entered this year, and would recommend it to anybody as the path around the park is very easy going.
At the beginning of the Easter holidays my family and I went to my cousin’s wedding and stayed nearby at the Olympic Lodge at Stoke Mandeville Stadium. The bedrooms in the Lodge were very similar to a Travelodge, but they all had much more space around the beds and in the bathrooms. The café (across the car park in the sports centre) was really bright and had a great atmosphere with all the disabled athletes using the facilities. It was open most of the day, but in the evenings we had to get Chinese take-away delivered to our room. The highlight of our stay was when, one evening, my sister and I had a brilliant time racing in our electric chairs around the racetrack! The Olympic Lodge was a brilliant place to stay if you have a wheelchair user in the family. Details of the Lodge can be found through the Stoke Mandeville Stadium website.
Lizzie Baily 2012
When I arrived I talked to the girls about my experiences of being a Brownie, and showed them some photographs. On my enrolment day in 1990, I chose to take my promise standing up in my calipers, which was a good lead into a discussion on mobility aids. I took along two manual wheelchairs to the meeting and the Brownies had great fun racing each other the length of the hall. Brown Owl and I also designed an obstacle course for the girls to complete in teams of three. One girl sat in the wheelchair while the others acted as helpers, pushing and guiding the wheelchair through the cones, over a rough carpet, through the doors and the biggest challenge, up, along and down the stage! The main difficulty they encountered was getting the wheelchair safely up and down with the passenger staying in the chair (adults were close by to help)! To end the meeting we talked about ways to make buildings more wheelchair friendly. I also set the Brownies their homework to design a poster about the Paralympics, and I was amazed at how many sports they could tell me about before starting this task!
A few weeks later I went back and gave the girls a questionnaire to fill in to see what they could remember from my first visit. The question they found the hardest was how to make a place easier for somebody in a wheelchair, so I hope I can go back to talk to them a bit more about this. I also gave out some prizes for the homework; I was really pleased with the efforts that the girls had gone to. Kory aged 7 won second prize for her creative art work which can be seen on the front cover. Before giving out the badges, Anita (Guiding Disability Advisor) and I talked to the girls about other types of disability. Anita and I are going to work together on facts about disabilities children might come across and put them into language understandable at Brownie level, so that hopefully anyone doing the Disability Awareness badge will receive the same information.
On Sunday 25th March I ‘ran’ the Sport Relief Mile at Graylingwell Park in Chichester with my friends Sheryl, Jennah (11) and Kory (7). It was a beautiful sunny morning and there were over 600 people and dogs there! Jennah and Kory ran off ahead of Sheryl and me, and speedy Jennah lapped us before we had turned the first corner of the rectangular route! The mile took me around 20 minutes so next time we will be entering the three mile course. I was slightly disappointed that I was the only wheelchair user who entered this year, and would recommend it to anybody as the path around the park is very easy going.
At the beginning of the Easter holidays my family and I went to my cousin’s wedding and stayed nearby at the Olympic Lodge at Stoke Mandeville Stadium. The bedrooms in the Lodge were very similar to a Travelodge, but they all had much more space around the beds and in the bathrooms. The café (across the car park in the sports centre) was really bright and had a great atmosphere with all the disabled athletes using the facilities. It was open most of the day, but in the evenings we had to get Chinese take-away delivered to our room. The highlight of our stay was when, one evening, my sister and I had a brilliant time racing in our electric chairs around the racetrack! The Olympic Lodge was a brilliant place to stay if you have a wheelchair user in the family. Details of the Lodge can be found through the Stoke Mandeville Stadium website.
Lizzie Baily 2012
