Lead organisation: Visionary
Partner organisations: MyVision Oxfordshire and Vision Support
Funded by Fight for Sight, Visionary launched the Making Lived Experience Matter project in 2022 to amplify the voices of lived experience of sight loss working within the sector. The Lived Experience Leaders and Lived Experience Peer Support forums successfully brought together professionals working within the sector in an engaged, safe and inclusive space. It aims to create a safe space for professionals with lived experience of sight-loss to be trained as future leaders. It is also a mechanism for current leaders with lived experience to progress, learning new skills that they can bring into their roles.
Visionary will partner with MyVision Oxfordshire and Vision Support to train staff, so that this model can be rolled out to a greater number of sight-loss charities. These partner organisations will accelerate training and resources, meaning that more can benefit from Visionary’s established model.
Why it matters
Many sight loss charities are focusing on implementing lived experience as a more central aspect of their operations, but training requires capacity and digital infrastructure that some, particularly smaller organisations, do not have.
Outcomes will include:
Inclusive online sessions: monthly peer-support and bi-monthly leadership sessions
A five episode podcast exploring lived experience perspectives
A facilitator training programme and toolkit for sector wise use
A shared evaluations framework to track reach, learning and impact
Two Visionary conference workshops – one on collaboration and one sharing project outcomes
A peer support WhatsApp group