Galloway’s ‘dream team’!

Galloway’s shows it is the ‘dream team’ during Dragon’s Den challenges
to reshape its future Sight loss charity Galloway’s has been
channelling Dragon’s Den as it embarks on a massive innovation project to enhance the
experiences of visually impaired people across Lancashire and Sefton.
The team, including people with lived experience of sight loss, have been actively
involved in shaping the charity’s future as they discussed different ways to ensure Galloway’s
remains relevant in the community.
They then pitched their top ideas to ‘dragons’, which included Galloway’s trustees, some of
whom are visually impaired, and experts from other charities.
The winning ideas will then be discussed again with another panel of blind and partially
sighted people to gain their insight.
Galloway’s has been able to carry out this big project work following a £120,330 grant from
The Julia and Hans Rausing Trust’s Charitable Survival Fund.
Stuart Clayton, CEO of Galloway’s, said: “Thanks to the support of Julia and Hans
Rausing, we have been able to start a process of service redesign, whilst still maintaining our
core support to the people who access our services.
“We wanted to take this opportunity to review everything we do so we can provide the
services people tell us they want. It will ensure that going forward, we continue to meet the
needs of blind and partially sighted people in an ever changing world.
“We started by actively seeking the views of visually impaired people, their families,
volunteers and supporters to find out what they wanted from us.
“We learnt a lot from that to take us to our design stage, and it was really important for
all our staff members to be involved as they are really passionate about delivering the best
experiences to the people we support, as well as supporters, donors and volunteers. They
really enjoyed coming up with new, innovative ideas and pitching them to our tough ‘dragons’.
“The next stage of this is to actively involve the people that really matter – our focus
group of visually impaired people. For us, it was essential that we work together to design
and implement new services, to ensure we really do meet the needs of blind and partially
sighted people.”
Julia and Hans Rausing commented: “When reading through the many applications for the
Charity Survival Fund, we were struck by the number of charities which are doing vital work
supporting communities across the country.
We are thrilled that Galloways will be able to continue to offer help and support to people,
at a time when the pandemic has made their work more important than ever before.”
Galloway’s supports blind and partially sighted people across Sefton and Lancashire.
For more information please contact: Natalie Walker on 01772 744148
or email Natalie.Walker@galloways.org.uk