Hi! Thank you for looking at our page to raise money for the workshops we run at Sharing Stories.

Our Mission:

In July 2018 the UK members of Sharing Stories visited our partner organisations in Uganda, where we ran a series of creative workshops supporting people to explore the stigma around mental health. The 5 day workshops were incredibly well-received and attended by over 40 people, including nurses, peer support workers and mental health practitioners, many of whom have experienced mental health difficulties previously.

An integral part of our workshops is to support participants with the means, accessibility and affordability of attendance. In Sharing Stories we strongly believe in equality and inclusivity, which means that we would not want anyone who are interested in our workshops to be excluded due to lack of transport, lack of funds to purchase food, and to not have a place to stay.

Prior to this year's visit to Uganda, our UK members worked with Butabika Recovery College, Kampala, in 2015 to find out what exactly promotes mental health wellbeing and what hinders recovery from emotional distress. One of the key factors reported by service users as an obstacle to their recovery is poverty. A lack of food and water sometimes stopped people in taking medication. In addition, not being able to get transport to their clinics often means they cannot access care. Sometimes, these factors led to people feeling negatively about themselves and also experienced stigma from others making assumptions about the diagnosis and the motivation of the person.

In our July 2018 event, we were all very proud to be Sharing Stories members. Through our last three years of fundraising, we were pleased to be able to provide food and fresh water, reimbursements for transports, and accommodation for regional representatives travelling 5+ hours to attend the workshops. We were proud to that our workshops were an environment where participants felt safe, were given choices, and were able to learn and be creative.

We hope that offering food and transport to people who attend Sharing Stories events can be a stable part of our work. We hope to continue being guided by our values of inclusiveness and equality. Lastly, we all wish for these basic needs to be met as soon as anyone walks into a Sharing Stories environment, and not to be worried about whether or not we can provide this due to lack of funds.

Thank you for reading our page and we hope you see you at some of our events in the near future!

Sharing Stories

Where to find us for future events:

Website: www.sharingstoriesventure.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/sharingstoriesventure

Twitter: twitter.com/sharingventure