Official charities
Two charities will directly benefit form the net proceeds of entry fees to the Standard Chartered Jersey Marathon. The Jersey based charity Headway and Standard Chartered Bank's Seeing is Believing initiatives.
Headway Jersey
Headway Jersey was formed 10 years ago when a group of like minded carers and sufferers got together for mutual support. It was specifically created to promote within the Island of Jersey an understanding of all aspects of brain injury and to provide information, support and services to people with brain injury, their families and carers. Headway operates a drop in centre for its members in order to help prevent social isolation for the brain injured, whilst also providing much needed respite for their carers and families. Headway also provides a number of community services including
- Hot meals and advice for members
- Outings and games evenings
- Networking for the Islands brain injured community
- Home visits by our outreach workers
- IT courses and educational liaison
- Transport and escorted visits to the hospital
- Counselling and advocacy
- Form filling, legal advice and support dealing with benefit tribunals
- Welfare payments
- Support and advice for carers and the families of the brain injured
- Outings and support for the children of the brain injured
- Accident prevention advice
- Lobbying on behalf of the Island 's brain injured
Headway Jersey is a locally registered charity and all money raised stays within the island.
To find out more about the services provided by Headway Jersey or to volunteer to raise funds for Headway Jersey by running in the marathon please contact Judy Ridley on 01534 505937.
Seeing is Believing
The statistics on blindness are staggering:
Every 5 seconds someone goes blind.
There are 37 million blind people in our world, yet a staggering 75% of blindness is avoidable.
The scale of the challenge to eliminate avoidable business is enormous, but providing help is both simple and cheap:
- 50p can provide one child with enough Vitamin A to protect their eyesight for one year.
- 75p means a family at risk from river blindness can be provided with Mectizan tablets for a year.
- £17 pays for a cataract operation for an adult.
- £45 can treat a whole village for river blindness.
Standard Chartered's Seeing is Believing initiative is working in partnership with the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness (IAPB), in collaboration with the World Health Organisation (WHO) and Vision 2020, to eliminate avoidable blindness by the year 2020.
Seeing is Believing has already raised enough money to ensure a million sight restorations by World Sight Day in October 2007. Standard Chartered and the IAPB have put in place controls to ensure that contributions to Seeing is Believing will be used exclusively to help eliminate avoidable blindness.
Seeing is Believing aims to raise more than £5 million and make a difference to the lives of ten million people by the year 2010 through community-based health, education and medical projects aimed at the prevention and treatment of avoidable blindness.
The next phase will focus on schemes in Tanzania , India , Bangladesh and Pakistan in 2007, before being extended to projects in six other countries and a further ten countries by 2010.
It will deliver a range of eye-care services, ranging from cataract surgery to training eye-care personnel, as well as delivering community-based education programmes and supporting training facilities and eye-care centres.