Information about the Deaf Committee

First, I'm going to tell you about the Deaf Committee. What is it? How did it start?

Here's a bit of background information: the campaigning side of DAII is called Islington Disability Network (IDN). IDN is a group of local disabled people. It receives a small amount of funding. In 2004 IDN decided to give a gift of £4 000 to the Deaf community so that they could meet together and improve things for Deaf people in Islington.

We held a Deaf meeting in Dec 2004 and asked Deaf people- how do you want to spend the money? Do you want us to run some meetings for you, invite speakers etc or do you want to organise things yourselves? The people at the meeting were unsure so they decided to set up a committee to make the decision. About 14 people volunteered.

The committee met in February 2005 and decided 2 important things:

They wanted to spend a year finding out how to set up their own Deaf campaign group.
They wanted DAII to manage the £4 000 and to use this money as the 'start up' money for an Islington Deaf campaign group to be launched next year.

So in 2005/6 the 14 committee members are meeting at DAII offices once a month to find out about setting up a campaign group, getting funding and learning from other campaign organisations.

At the moment the committee is closed to new members as we have no more room to fit everyone in! In addition to offering a venue free of charge, IDN are also doing other things to support the group like organising assertiveness and other training, offering the use of a PC, administration support etc. We are keen that Deaf people get better rights!

If you would like to find out more about the Deaf campaign committee please contact wendy@daii.org or deaf-committee@daii.org, fax 020 7359 1855, Minicom 020 7359 1891.

Next, about Disability In Camden (DISC)