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Charity born out of grief shows working together can save lives
• ROSE Hacker’s challenge “to make something good out of something bad” is a perfect description of the incentive for founding The Stuart Low Trust (£20 to a good cause from a man who preached hatred, June 8).
The Stuart Low remembered by the trust killed himself less than six months after receiving a diagnosis of schizophrenia. He believed that killing himself was a good deed. The challenge for family and friends left grieving for him was to ensure that other vulnerable people would find the support they needed to want to stay alive.
The trust is a health promotion charity, especially mental health. We take a community development approach to health promotion, with core values of “inclusiveness” and “working together” (you don’t have to have a label to take part).
We run social events with nutritious refreshments (Rose Hacker will be speaking at one of them), occasional training courses designed to help people to make the most of social opportunities, a range of holidays and outings, and we maintain a gardening plot at Culpeper Community Garden and a photography programme based at the Southwood Smith Centre. All our activities are run on cooperative lines, with volunteers from among the people who would attend anyway.
So far three people have told me that we saved their lives. One woman said the encouragement she found from members of the community outside the world of mental health giving presentations about their enthusiasms had enabled her to restart her life after 17 years. There is plenty more that we are planning to do, but I feel that we have made a good start.
VIRGINIA LOW
Chairwoman, The Stuart Low Trust |
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