East Lothian Champs Get Busy

The month of October was full of exciting events for the East Lothian Champions Board. Here, our participation assistant Bethany, who works alongside the East Lothian Champs, has written about some of the stuff the group has gotten up to since our last SpeakOut edition.

Back in September, we took part in the Edinburgh Kiltwalk. We had a great turnout and thankfully the weather stayed nice – which is always a bonus! We completed the Wee Wander which was a 5-mile route from Silverknowes to the BT Murrayfield stadium. Our champs had a great time. Speaking on the walk and what they enjoyed about it they said:

“Encouragement to keep me going” “Exercise” “Getting out the house” “It was awesome, and it was good to walk with everyone” “It was great to see all the dog’s there”

The next event we attended was The Love Rally to kick off Care Experienced Week. We arrived a little later because our pre-booked bus never turned up and we had to run for the train. But once we were there we could feel the passion coming from everyone, it was an amazing experience for us! Our champs shared their thoughts on the Love Rally:

“It was amazing, and I loved doing it and I would do it again” “I also loved the Greggs that we got after” “Virtual Love Rally helped me stay involved”

One of our young people couldn’t make it to The Love Rally as they had fractured their tibia (ouch). But they joined in the experience by watching the Facebook live and said it made them feel connected. We completed our big month of events by going along to Time to Shine. It was such an amazing experience getting all our guys together and to reconnect with people we hadn’t seen in a while. There was lots of fun had, they said:

“At time to shine I enjoyed meeting new people” “It was great to see old pals” “Since I fractured my tibia, I could not do a great amount” “I sat and danced on a chair” “Saw folk I hadn’t seen in ages” “Met someone new” “Love the sensory colours in the background at the dancing area” “Met loads of different people” “Talked to different people about their care experience” “Eat some pizza” “Got to meet new people” “Took part in dancing, out of my comfort zone but just what I need”