I am founder and Managing Director of a non-profit, social enterprise organisation that has recently relocated to the Irvine area.

I trained as a social worker and have worked all my life in North Ayrshire, from this experience I couldn’t see a better base for my organisation.

I started working on my vision back in 2014, initially, as a small association but I knew that to afford change and have significant impact I had to create something much bigger.

I wanted to not only make an individual difference to people’s lives but as a community and provide services and support that many people in my situation felt were missing.

I developed Fibromyalgia in my 30’s or so I thought. It took the NHS approximately 5 years to fully diagnose me and now with my own dedicated learning, I can place this back much further in my life as the starting point. When I received my diagnosis, I had no understanding of the condition and no one to ask for help. I had no idea how to live with it, work with it and grow with it. I didn’t know how complex it was or the impact on other areas such as mental health, sleep, the bodies organs and so on. I just plodded on but could never get to a place where I didn’t take bad flares for months on end, this meant periods of absence from work, inability to participate in family life and eventually impacted on my career, relationship and friendships.

Why am I telling you this?

I was determined to utilise my social work skills and knowledge to ensure that people diagnosed with Fibromyalgia in Scotland had an organisation to turn to. Often, they don’t quite meet the criteria for service or support or have been treated by various teams but at no point was this all pieced together, and the full person supported in their journey.

It was this very reason I set up FFU Scotland CIC. Scotlands' National Fibromyalgia Organisation.

The demand is huge. I am sure you may know of someone yourself living with the syndrome. In Scotland it is estimated that 200,000-300,000, 6% of our nation live with the syndrome. North Ayrshire from our own membership statistics has one of the highest prevalence’s in the country.

Fibromyalgia a chronic central nervous system syndrome affects the person socially, emotionally, physically, cognitively, occupationally and familially

Again, why do I tell you all this?

I am reaching out to share that young, old, women, men are affected and that the prevalence has been rising in latter years.

We are working tirelessly on our online and community-based services but these will only work as we grow the first Fibromyalgia centre in Scotland. This shall be using an approach that looks at the person as whole and utilising local partnerships also to develop the inputs as well as our own delivery.

The centre will not only offer support, education, advocacy and inspiration to those living with Fibromyalgia but their care support and other professionals. It will offer a place to learn about the syndrome and trial various therapies and activity to support as well as a community-based pathway. It will also offer a place to gain support, to share, to feel included, to learn or revisit skills that build confidence and empowerment and lastly provide opportunities to give back in volunteering with future goals of getting back into work.

So many with fibromyalgia are unsupported not solely in families, in communities, in health and social care but also in employment. We wish to tackle this and change it.

We also host a food and toy hamper campaign every Christmas for families affected by Fibromyalgia that are in poverty and struggling financially mentally and physically. Last year with only support from our members and north Ayrshire food bank we put out 69 hampers the length and breadth of Scotland. Many living across Ayrshire.

In the last few weeks Arnold Clark CEO authorised a new Citroen Berlingo van in support of our work so we could travel the country and to rural areas, in our bid to access those majorly isolated communities.

The momentum is growing, and we would both be honoured and so appreciative if you would consider making a donation to our camaign

On behalf of Scotlands Fibromyalgia community

Thank you

Alison McColl