The Uphill Ski club is a charity committed to providing winter sporting activities for the disabled. The charity organises a number of trips annually to the French Alps and the United States, as well as a ski school running from January to April in the Cairngorm ski area.
This club is open to anyone with any disability, and they all benefit hugely from their trips with skiing being highly therapeutic, with the actual learning to ski providing a massive boost to self confidence. The Uphill Ski club has now managed to open up a sport that many believed was closed to the disabled. The club now takes trips to three European resorts and in 1998 initiated a skiing program for those in schools, this was highly successful and this year the club is now looking to increase the number of school groups. Not only is the club committed to its holiday programs but also organises three local groups that take day trips to dry ski slopes.
To enable these trips the club needs to raise funds, which are used in a number of ways. A substantial amount is allocated to subsidising the helpers and also a residential course that helps them understand the needs of the disabled. The maintenance of the ski equipment costs the club approximately £15,000 annually. In addition to this the club helps with the funding of the school and group trips.
The clubs fundraising is concentrated around a five-year plan. The current aims are to provide increasing opportunities for the able and not so able to integrate and to flourish as well as developing the schools program and offer new and differing opportunities.
Mencap
Mencap was founded in 1946 and has grown into Britain's leading charity for people with learning disabilities and their families. A learning disability is what used to be called mental handicap. Mencap believes people with a learning disability should have the best possible opportunities to live as full citizens. Mencap raise public awareness and support, and provide a range of housing, education, employment, information and holiday services. Mencap's national network of Gateway Clubs provide leisure opportunities, and take a leading role in helping people with a learning disability make their own choices and express their views.
There are an estimated 1.2 million people in the UK with a learning disability, some 200,000 of whom have severe disabilities. Caused by damage to the brain or by genetic conditions, learning disability has many different clinical forms; Down's syndrome is perhaps the best known.
Mencap provides assistance and support to individuals that are mentally handicapped and their families. Every week two hundred parents find out that their child is mentally handicapped. Mencap provides valuable support and advice to individuals and their families via their Family Advisor Network throughout Britain. It is important that parents are given the support and information to make the right decisions about the future of their children.