“Their motivation was truly inspiring”
Today, we have a guest blog from one of the volunteers in our team, Vaishali Vyas, about how she has been supporting our campaigning activity across the UK:
“I have been volunteering for the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign for a couple of months now. I set aside one or two days of my week to help out the Campaigns team at the charity. I’d never heard of any neuromuscular diseases before that affect over 70,000 people in the UK and the impact these conditions have on people and their families. After hearing Nic Bungay from the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign speak about the charity at my university I decided that I wanted to get involved in any way that I could.
Since then I have been involved mainly with helping to organise parliamentary events and Muscle Group meetings. Helping with the parliamentary events involves contacting MPs, AMs, MSPs and MLAs, I have learnt about the importance of getting parliamentary and assembly members involved in order to raise awareness of the problems faced by neuromuscular patients. Encouraging the parliamentarians and assembly members to attend has probably been my most difficult task at the charity but it is also the most fulfilling task when hearing confirmation that they are willing to come to an event and support the charity and its members.
I have also helped organise Muscle Group meetings, encouraging members to attend their local meeting to discuss issues that are concerning them. Muscle Group meetings are a great way for those with the condition, their family and carers, healthcare professionals and MPs to all meet and share experiences and discuss what can be done and what needs to be done to improve services.
For a short time I was involved with talking to some of our supporters who had been chosen to become Olympic torchbearers, in order to share their story with others. This was the first time I had spoken to people affected by the condition. I talked to them about their previous achievements and how they felt about being part of the Olympics. They were all overjoyed and it seemed that no matter how old they were, 10 or 20, they had already achieved so much. Their motivation was truly inspiring.
I have really enjoyed working here the last few months, and I thoroughly enjoy working with the team. As someone who is extremely shy I was really nervous about volunteering in a new environment but I take great pleasure in coming here every week to help in any way I can. I hope that I can continue to make a use contribution while volunteering for the charity.”
Thanks to Vaishali and all our volunteers for their support – for more information about the work of the Campaigns team, please email campaigns@muscular-dystrophy.org
