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Greater Manchester Autistic Covid Support

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I am fundraising to meet the needs of the local autistic community in Manchester during the pandemic. My colleagues and I are autistic, putting back into our local community. we are creating a database &  communications platform that will be utilised by members. However, we need to cover the costs of registering a domain, setting up a website for these to run, along with its hosting online for at least the next year, and need your help to do this!

As part of our aims we meet socially with our members, however, in-person meetings are unlikely to happen for at least another four months, so we'll need to cover the cost of using Zoom to host regular meetings, which costs. As people on the Autistic Spectrum can be very isolated,  the pandemic has further compounded this, so we are doing everything we can to reduce loneliness further, often having gone for months without seeing friends and family and having no-one to ask for help.  Often there is a sense of being overwhelmed in everyday situations, please see the film “Too Much Information”...

Christmas is likely to make many of our members' difficulties worse, so we would massively appreciate your assistance in preventing this vulnerable group from falling prey to social isolation and the anxiety of being trapped alone this Christmas. 

This website will be moulded by our members, with their ideas feeding into it, creating a sense of ownership and belonging, fostering hobbies, and creating a routine  is very important in wellbeing for autistic people; i.e.

➜ to identify needs - to offer regular wellbeing surveys, so we might monitor mental health and identify trends, preventing anyone from not being supported
➜ to host activities & quizzes, increasing social cohesion, reduce loneliness 
➜ to advertise the group to a wider audience and hopefully increase participation across Greater Manchester 
➜ for us to securely communicate with each other
➜ if people wanted to blog they could do so, safely, and privately if they wished
➜ The site will allow members to work together on projects and on funding bids for these projects, such as swimming classes, walking groups, an Autistic-run café, and a stim room, for example. which are in the process of being applied for now
➜ These projects will foster a stronger sense of social cohesion and ownership of the community and form the basis of new friendships (and improve fitness)
➜ we will provide one another with peer-support 
➜ We will use the website to keep membership details up to date, securely, again preventing anyone from losing touch
➜ we will use the site to create a list of volunteers to be matched up with people needing assistance to ensure that no-one of our members is alone with their needs left unmet.
➜ We will ensure that we track contact with our members, by using the database to prevent any member from falling through the cracks and being missed out altogether in receiving support
➜ Many of our members socialise only through our group online, especially since being restricted to their homes during the lockdowns
➜ We will also offer a freephone helpline for our members to keep up to date with our activities and receive support from the group organisers
➜ SMS messaging and WhatApp contact with members, made through our custom database and communication platform, where we might identify someone experiencing trouble before it becomes an issue!

If you can help, be that a pound or two, we'd be so grateful, as would our 270+ members!

Thank you!

Kelvin xx

Organizer

Kelvin Hanratty
Organizer

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