Back in early 2020 Lake District based charity 'Vision of Adventure' was awarded a grant from our Jeanette Gill Special Awards fund. With the unfortunate delay in running residential courses in 2020 due to the pandemic, our funding has now been spent on activity courses in 2021.
Vision of Adventure's aim is to increase physical and mental wellbeing and reduce isolation in blind and partially sighted adults. Husband and wife team Jill and Dave Corso donated a considerable sum of their own money to start the charity in September 2018. They also provide office space in their house and use their own vehicle for moving equipment and towing the trailers used in the activities.
Our Jeanette Gill Gold Award of £9,995 was spent to cover the accommodation, food and transport costs for nine residential outdoor courses. These courses included 5 tandem cycling courses, 2 rock climbing courses, 1 triathlon training course and 1 open water swimming course. There was a strong bias towards cycling because after the lock-downs there was more demand for tandem cycling than anything else. The participants were just desperate to be outside doing some serious exercise. In total these courses provided opportunities for 45 visually impaired adults.
Vision of Adventure reported that following our triathlon training weekend we had several visually impaired athletes (they probably wouldn’t class themselves as “athletes” but the charity's belief is that if we treat people like athletes they will begin to behave like athletes!) who are now actively training to take part in a triathlon later in the year. The incentive of an event on the horizon is a real spur for people to look for opportunities to train and the confidence to join local clubs and groups.
Vision of Adventure make it easy for people to enter the Kendal Triathlon with guides that they have met on their courses. By going as a group and staying in group accommodation they remove any awkwardness that there may be in approaching each other to compete as a pair - some pairs will form long term guiding partnerships which is a great start.
We are very happy to have been able to help Vision of Adventure with this great project.