Express LD - the website!

If you've been following my blog posts you'll know that along with my fourth year studies I'm currently Project Manager and Co-founder of a charity project called Express LD. Express LD aims to give practical support to students with dyslexia whilst also dispelling the stigma surrounding learning difficulties. In December we held our first launch workshop which you can read about here.
This week our wonderful treasurer Sarah presented me with the sweetest stickers with our logo on, I was so excited I gave out four to friends straight away, last night in Revolution bar I saw one of them still had it stuck to his shirt whilst working, I might of overreacted but man that made me happy!
But that's not the big news, the big news is that after months of planning and hard work we have a website, I'm so incredibly proud. 
A massive, huge, humongous, gargantuan thank you goes out to Tom Shore (aka Austin) for doing this for us out of the goodness of his heart. 
Hopefully over the next few weeks we will be adding some professional photos of the team and workshops, plus a new 'events' page. But for now I present to you Express LD, the website. Go take a look! 

www.expressld.co.uk

Express LD Launch Workshop

I've mentioned it before here and here but just in case you missed it, one of the things I do with my time is act as Project Manager for a volunteer-run charity project called Express LD. We are devoted to helping young people with dyslexia and other learning difficulties achieve their full potential by providing support and practical study tools. We do this by running workshops for students that involve revision and study activities that make learning not only more interesting but effective.
I say this with complete confidence as we finally ran our first ever workshop in December at Telford College and it was awesome. It was incredible to see all the ideas we'd been working on for months and months finally come together and the learning techniques we used worked better than I could possibly of imagined. One of our volunteers Alex was demonstrating Spiral Learning by using a smoothie menu (just a fake one I made for this purpose) and despite literally never having seen it before he learnt the specs for 3 smoothies in under 5 minutes right in front of the whole group. I bet he could even tell me them now. It was incredible! I'd read about it obviously and knew that it must work to some extent but having not actually seen it done before it was amazing. The students, teachers, myself and even the volunteers themselves were all so impressed and on my part at least; relieved - how awful would it of been if after months of designing the workshops the techniques we taught didn't actually work!?


We also did a mass group activity of World Mapping which was really effective. So much in fact I will 100% be using it myself in my upcoming final exams. I say 'we', I should probably point out that I sat at the back snapping pictures and frantically attempting to make notes the whole time grinning like a Cheshire cat!

Before going to Telford College I did explain to them that the workshop was a trial for us and we'd appreciate any feedback they could give us, it was lovely of Sam and Julie over at Telford to let us do this and they were so helpful before, during and after. The nicest part of it was actually we were helping each other out, they were just as keen to learn and improve their learning support techniques as much as we were, and after such a successful workshop they have kindly invited us back this year to do a series of workshops! Now that's a successful trial run! 

Lovely Logo

This little achievement is something I'm just so happy with I thought I'd take a minute to share it, ExpressLD has a logo! I didn't make it as I'm no graphic designer but my good friend Sam Hughes (who's also a nifty photographer) did as a favour because he's a sweetheart like that. So I proudly present the new and wonderful logo for ExpressLD (the project that I manage and co-founded). My big hope is that by the end of this year that bit will read "the charity that I manage and co-founded", if we raise £10,000 by the end of this year, which I truly believe is doable, we can become a registered charity!

ExpressLD is a volunteer run project that aims to provide support and practical tools to young people with learning difficulties so that they are better able to acheive their full potential in school, further education and work. (and I'm so proud of it!)

Introducing Express LD!

Express LD (Express Learning Difficulties) is the project that I sort of stumbled into creating, along with the University of Edinburgh dyslexia society president.
Starbucks recently teamed up with UK Youth Action to give generous funding to projects run by young people that contribute to their local community. I was asked by the DysSoc President to help with a bid to the board. The board included people from Starbucks, UK Youth, a local MP, a member of parliament for the department of education, journalist from The Herald and what seemed like just lots of quite scary people in suits. Being the nervous blabber mouth I am I think I did actually mention that maybe they should of turned up in trackies to make life easier. Smooth Becca. 


Anyway, long story short, we got the grant! Plus another one soon after from O2 Think Big! So it's all coming together, I'm currently recruiting a team to run the project so it's not just me on my lonesome any more, and my phone never stops buzzing with emails. But it's exciting and I'm loving having a real purpose! I definitely will end up mentioning this project several times so I thought I'd introduce it properly with our mission statement (which I wrote - proud face) 

Express LD (Express Learning Difficulties) is a volunteer-run project based in Edinburgh; it is devoted to helping young people with learning difficulties achieve their full potential at school, in further education and in work. 

Through running informative and interactive workshops in local colleges and schools, our mission is to raise awareness of and eliminate the existing stigma surrounding learning difficulties, including but not limited to, dyslexia. We aim to provide knowledge, support and practical study tools that help young people reach their full potential.