The Basingstoke Disability Forum (https://www.bddf.org.uk/) do some incredible work around Basingstoke and provde amazing resources for the community.

Today they hosted their annual Disability Awareness Day in the Malls where 26 service providers set up stalls and told local residents about what they do in the community, I had a great time going around and chatting to everybody and as always was amazed by the amount of great groups in the area.

As for what we did, I attended the setup and helped the providers get organised and set up while Tazmin, Charli & Pajinder joined myself to help pack up at the end of the day. Taking down a lot of signs and carrying plenty of tables to where a van was to pick them up.

After a few months of hard work and great numbers we decided to do a social sessions this week!

As usual we met at the Basingstoke Sports & Social Club who have incredibly generously allowed us to use the their committee room for free all year. Then we went for a walk out and around the War Memorial Park before scurrying back once it started raining.

Once we were back at BSSC we went into the committee room and set up for our games night. Yeun & Tazmin both brought some board games to play and we decided to try some altered team games. We started with Articulate where to make it harder we combined it with charades, the highlight was definitely Yazid trying to make us guess "stream" which took at least 5 minutes.

We followed this with Scattergories where we decided to all work together to get the most possible words. I would like to formally admit that Charli was right and that a dormouse weighs significantly less than a pound.

Throughout all of this there were great conversations, snacks and a lot of laughs!

Thank you all for a great evening

Another great session done! We like spending time down at Eastrop park as it is such a beautiful space!

This week we went from Basingstoke Sports and Social Club to Eastrop Park where we met Sandra from the council. After a bit of stress where we couldn't find all the tools we have previously used we got together everything we could and split into two teams.

Charli, new member Nathan and myself went and did some litter picking and while Eastrop Park is always tidy we were able to find a good collection of rubbish.

Meanwhile Sammi, Evelyn, Tazmin, Yazid & Yeun made the best they could with the available tools and did a lot of clearing of weeds and dirt tidying up beside the boathouse!

We were also joined by Pajinder who saw us volunteering and joined us along with having his daughter providing morale support! Was so nice meeting him after he moved to Basingstoke yesterday! Look forward to seeing you at future sessions.

We were able to make a really nice difference in the space