Galloway’s shows it is the ‘dream team’ during Dragon’s Den challenges to reshape its future

Sight loss charity Galloway’s has been channelling Dragon’s Den as it embarks on a massive innovation project to enhance the experiences of visually impaired people across Lancashire and Sefton.

The team, including people with lived experience of sight loss, have been actively involved in shaping the charity’s future as they discussed different ways to ensure Galloway’s remains relevant in the community.

They then pitched their top ideas to ‘dragons’, which included Galloway’s trustees, some of whom are visually impaired, and experts from other charities.

Galloway’s has been able to carry out this big project work following a £120,330 grant from The Julia and Hans Rausing Trust’s Charitable Survival Fund.

Stuart Clayton, CEO of Galloway’s, said:  “Thanks to the support of Julia and Hans Rausing, we have been able to start a process of service redesign, whilst still maintaining our core support to the people who access our services.

“We wanted to take this opportunity to review everything we do so we can provide the services people tell us they want. It will ensure that going forward, we continue to meet the needs of blind and partially sighted people in an ever changing world.

“We started by actively seeking the views of visually impaired people, their families, volunteers and supporters to find out what they wanted from us.

“We learnt a lot from that to take us to our design stage, and it was really important for all our staff members to be involved as they are really passionate about delivering the best experiences to the people we support, as well as supporters, donors and volunteers. They really enjoyed coming up with new, innovative ideas and pitching them to our tough ‘dragons’.

“The next stage of this is to actively involve the people that really matter – our focus group of visually impaired people. For us, it was essential that we work together to design and implement new services, to ensure we really do meet the needs of blind and partially sighted people.”

Julia and Hans Rausing commented: “When reading through the many applications for the Charity Survival Fund, we were struck by the number of charities which are doing vital work supporting communities across the country. We are thrilled that Galloways will be able to continue to offer help and support to people, at a time when the pandemic has made their work more important than ever before.”