Oldham Hub Live

As we now hold our hubs on a Zoom call we had all agreed that it would be nice to invite Members from other KeyRing areas along.

This week four new people came along from teams outside of Oldham. We are going to keep sharing the invite so that more people can be involved.

First we went through some of the daily news updates. Our central team has been sharing daily easy read news updates that help us to understand the key messages from the government. This time we spoke about which shops would be opening and what is open already.

Some of us had been asking questions about Black Lives Matter and George Floyd. So we put aside some time to discuss this. We all have a right to learn about the news and have a safe space to talk about it. We had an easy read document that helped us to understand more about the movement and the reasons that people are protesting.

We talked about how George Floyd died and how it felt to see this. We were upset that he had been asking for help when he died.

Everyone deserves to have fair treatment and fair trial. Some of us were very upset and we all had a lot to say. We talked a bit about how we’ve sometimes not been treated fairly and how it has felt to feel discriminated against.

Some of us have been called slow and been abused. At times we’ve felt like we haven’t wanted to do things like go to school. We’ve been bullied for how we look or how we act.

Sometimes we need help to have our voice heard. We talked about how KeyRing can help people’s voice to be heard.

The world needs to speak up for others. We might help by sharing a picture, or information. It’s great that we feel like we can speak out now.

One of us said, “Since I’ve had KeyRing involved I feel like I’ve been able to share how I feel. It is important that we also help others to speak out. It is important that everyone gets a chance to speak. I feel much more confident since I’ve had some support from KeyRing.”

We then had a break for a cup of tea but most of us just stayed on and chatted about the things we’d been doing.

Then we did a quiz. We put all the questions on the facebook group so that everyone could join in even if they didn’t want to join the video chat.

Sometimes it was really noisy but we are all learning how to use the mute buttons and the chat buttons.

Debbie says “It’s important that we give people the right tools to talk about current affairs sensitively. Building independence is so much more than supporting with practical activities.”

The easy read information about Black Lives Matter and George Floyd was created by Jade French and can be found on her website.

You can find out more about the work we do on our Oldham page.