Our vision is a world where everyone has equal access to adventure. Our mission is to enable visually impaired adults to have the same opportunities to take part in adventurous outdoor activities as sighted people.
We deliver short residential courses in adventurous activities. The courses, based in the North West, are specifically for visually impaired adults, supported by specialist instructors and a team of trained, volunteer sighted guides. Activities include caving, canoeing, rock climbing, open water swimming, tandem cycling, triathlon, and hill walking. Our beneficiaries come from all over the country.
Visual impairment in otherwise active, able bodied adults is a low incidence disability. Our participants have often never met others in a similar situation with similar aspirations. Their needs are not met by local groups for visually impaired people as these largely cater for the elderly or people with other disabilities in addition to their sight loss.
An inability to lead an active life has wide-reaching negative impacts on people’s physical health and wellbeing. We fill this gap. We are proud to be recognised, by Disability Rights UK, as a “User Led Disabled Persons Organisation”. Everything we do is in response to consultation with our participants and trustees.
Vision of Adventure is a really small niche charity. We exist solely to give, otherwise able bodied, visually impaired adults access to adventurous activities. Crucially this also gives them the chance to meet other like-minded VI adults as well as sighted guides with similar interests.
There is not room in this application to adequately explain the benefits of what we do but our Impact Report from 2024 shows how much our services are needed in the VI community.
81% said we enabled them to take part in activities not available to them elsewhere.
100% said they personally benefitted from socialising with other visually impaired participants on their course.
95% feel an improvement in their mental health.
Vision of Adventure has now been running as an independent charity for over 6 years (we are just entering our 7th season) and although we have never advertised our services word has spread through the VI community and we are now struggling to meet the demand.
As we enter the 2025 season we have waiting lists for 75% of our planned courses. We operate a “fair booking” system to share out the available places and have had to turn people away from our cycling, swimming and climbing courses.
We feel that after 6 years, including the tricky times during and after the pandemic, we have shown that what we do is effective and viable. The charity is now ready to move forward, expand and build on what we have created so far. We are requesting this funding to begin our journey of increasing our provision to meet the need.