Member Article

An audience with Branson

AHEAD of this year’s Deaf Awareness Week (May 4 - 10) Durham-based charity Signature is rallying support and urging people from across Durham and the North East, indeed across the UK, to ‘get voting’ after entering a competition that could see the charity receive a £250k funding boost from Virgin boss Richard Branson.

Signature, which was founded in 1982 and employs 23 people, is a national charity which campaigns to improve the standards of communication with deaf and deafblind people in the UK. Its vision is of a fully accessible society, powered by a greater understanding of the languages and communication methods used by deaf and deafblind people.

Hearing loss is a major public health issue affecting 10 million people – that’s one in six of the UK population. That number is expected to grow to 14.5 million by 2031. Signature is currently developing a GCSE in BSL. The GCSE figures for England show that 7 of every 10 students in our schools gets 5 GCSEs at grades A-C. For deaf students, that falls to only 4 in 10.

Integrating BSL into the UK education system is of great importance to Signature and the deaf community and winning ‘Pitch to Rich’ will provide the vital financial support the BSL GCSE campaign needs.

Signature submitted their entry into Branson’s ‘Pitch to Rich’ in the ‘Grow’ category earlier this week, and are already in third place with almost 2000 votes. A great start - but competition is stiff and the charity is looking to generate even more votes by the first round deadline of 5th May 2015, and is calling on support from across the region to help boost their numbers.

Voting only takes 30 seconds, http://www.virginmediabusiness.co.uk/pitch-to-rich/grow/signature/

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Richard Crulley .