Orpheus centre with Richard Stilgoe. I have vague memories of Richard Stilgoe on TV. Circle of children around and to the side of him. Guitar maybe, piano or organ. I can’t recall any of his music but imagine he was once quite famous.

Today, he runs the Orpheus centre providing an education for a few 18-21 year old disabled students. They skills they teach are about self sufficiency, the things I would take for granted like paying the gas bill his school will teach. They also use music and drama as a tool to build self confidence and we were treated to a performance by 4 students. It really was a treat. Richard would accompany them on his keyboard but they would sing and play instruments adapted to meet their needs. At the end, they had the whole theatre singing along to an upbeat song they’d written, they had us doing the actions too.
Orpheus is a school to be proud of, making a real and visible difference to the lives of people in our community, teaching skills we don’t (can’t?) measure with any standard of GCSE or A level grading system.

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This entry is part of a series about my visit to the Rotary District Conference. It might not make much sense on it’s own, why not start at the first post and read all the way through.
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Graham Clarke. A true English eccentric! Said the person sitting next to me in the Auditorium. I couldn’t put it better myself, so I’ll use those words verbatim. Graham entertained for 20 minutes, changing hats, telling his stories and poetry, playing some sort of mouth organ as a divider between scenes. I first heard of Graham about 5 years ago from his books and watercolour pictures. I gather he is a Rotarian in the maidstone area and his paintings feature on this years club directory, the confernce guide and I believe a calendar that is being sold. I’ve always liked his pictures for their simple, childlike detail that looks so simple yet I imagine would be so hard to create effectively.

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This entry is part of a series about my visit to the Rotary District Conference. It might not make much sense on it’s own, why not start at the first post and read all the way through.
<--- Previous Post or Next Post in this series —>
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Leonard Cheshire School 4 All.
This charity impoves the lot of the disabled children in the third world. If you think how important disability access to public buildings has become in the last few years in the UK, you might imagine the problems disabled children will have in getting to school in the third world. Couple this with generations of discrimination against those who have a disability and the result is very few will get an education. Leonard Cheshire has been working to change this.

They help fund and organise the renovation to school buildings to make access by disabled children possible. Equally important to the buildings, they work with the disabled children, the families and the wider community to enable the disabled children to be accepted into school.

This is another worthy charity but I couldn’t help feel sorry for the presenter, having to follow Help for Heroes.

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This entry is part of a series about my visit to the Rotary District Conference. It might not make much sense on it’s own, why not start at the first post and read all the way through.
<--- Previous Post or Next Post in this series —>
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