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4. Miscellaneous issues for self-help groups PDF Print E-mail
Posted by Nitin Tomer   
Thursday, 23 July 2009 13:57
Written by Keith Boss
Thursday, 29 June 2006

1.  Finance

There will always be various costs in running a self-help group, so some thought
is needed about how to raise the money.

A necessary decision will be whether you need a voluntary treasurer.  It might
also be necessary to have a volunteer who would be in charge of fund raising.

There maybe people or companies in your area that would be prepared to give
small donations for some of your expenses.  Your expenses would be reduced, if
there was no rental charge for the place where you met.  However there will
always be some expenses to advertise meetings and preparing posters or leaflets
or photocopying to attract new members.

Funds can also be raised at specially arranged events.

2. Publicity

Initially, and also at regular intervals, your local self-help group should be
advertised.  There will be various ways of doing this.

Send an e-mail (post) containing your thoughts to stutteringselfhelp.
The main stuttering Association in your Country may give you some advertising
space.
Speech and health clinics may allow you to put a poster on a noticeboard.
SLTs/SLPs who specialise in Stammering / Stuttering may agree to pass on a leaflet.
Use your local press.
Use your local radio TV.
Put posters in local meeting places, wherever there are noticeboards.
Be inventive, make overtures to all the different groups of people in your area,
and ask if you can leave some leaflets or posters.
Possibly the best publicity is if, you with your stammer, can go and talk to
groups of people, or go and talk on radio or TV, about what you're doing and why
you're doing it.

3. Preschool and schoolchildren

If parents of children who stammer, or children themselves, contact you, you
should have a clear policy in mind as to how you will cope.

You, and the group after discussion, may decide the group is for adults only.

You may decide that children are allowed to attend provided there is a parent or
guardian present to look after them.  If there are sufficient children you may
decide it is worth having a children's meeting before the adult meeting.  You
may also try to find an SLP with some expertise in children who stammer who
would volunteer their time.

Your response may well be dictated by the help and resources you can obtain.

4. Questions

If you have any questions about any aspect of running the group, do not hesitate
to post and ask us on stutteringselfhelp and we will try to help you. 
There is obviously a learning curve, but as more and more groups begin, and pass
on some of their experience through stutteringselfhelp, more will be known and more
help will be available for new groups.

5. Feedback

When you start your group, please post your experiences to stutteringselfhelp. 
Everyone will be interested to read your ups and downs, your success your
failure, and to generally learn from your experience.

Last Updated on Thursday, 23 July 2009 20:09
 
5. Advantages of a Self Help group PDF Print E-mail
Posted by Nitin Tomer   
Thursday, 23 July 2009 13:58

1.    Meeting other stammerers;
2.    Encouragement from other stammerers;
3.    Knowing you are not alone;
4.    Hearing of other therapies and seeing them in use;
5.    Talking about your therapy and practicing it;
6.    Generally exchanging ideas;
7.    Being able to address several people, up to the whole group;
8.    Gaining more confidence in speaking and social situations;
9.    Having people to practice with the telephone;
10.    Engaging in role play (Interviews etc);
11.    If the group is set up for ‘exchanging jobs around the group’, experience in carrying out new job functions;
12.    Starting or continuing to desensitize you by stammering freely, until you switch in to ‘speaking tools’ mode;
13.    With luck, easy access at meetings to a trained and / or under training Speech Language professional;
14.    Equal voice in shaping the direction of the group;
15.    Possibility of asking for talks from professionals;
16.    Occasional meetings with other groups;
17.    Inviting others (employers / police / government representatives etc.) to meetings to hear first
hand about your problems and how you cope;
18.    Inviting local media to see and hear your experiences;
19.    All these things will build your own self image, and start to deal with emotional baggage many stammerers have;
20.    The meetings can be both fun and enjoyable, with you enjoying speaking.

Last Updated on Thursday, 23 July 2009 14:03
 
Ideas for SHG PDF Print E-mail
Posted by Administrator   
Monday, 10 August 2009 12:19

Here are some ideas for conducting SHG meetings; Please adapt them to your needs. Experiment with new ideas.

 

 

SN

Activity

Purpose / benefit

Facilitator's role

Approx Time

1

Preliminaries:

1. Welcome everyone with warmth.

2. Make them sit in a circle

3. Tell them briefly what you are going to do today and what time meting is expected to be over.

Sitting in circle promotes equality and better communication

Make adjustments to ensure everyone is comfortable (a girl may want to sit with another girl rather than a stranger..)

10-15 minutes

2

Introductions:

You can do it in two rounds:

1. People just tell their name only, demonstrating their popular speech technique (I would say- my name is s-s-s-sachin. This is called bouncing.)

2. In second round everyone can speak a few more words about themselves/ their work/ their hobbies/ families etc.

Everyone should get to know one another's first name and be comfortable using it.

Make sure that people dont use more than allotted 2 minutes for the second round.

No one should interrupt, prompt, help or correct others.

Let group cheer when each member finishes speaking.

20-30 minutes

3

Reading together:

Have photocopied text for this purpose. Ask 4-5 members to read same text together after counting “1,2,3”.

This will make most PWS to be fluent and feel better as a result.

Group people with similar personalities (age , gender) together- making sure that they dont feel intimidated by others.

20-30 minutes

4

Reading in twos or alone (as above) same text

This will be a little bit more difficult but many PWS will rise to the challenge and will feel more confident having succeeded at it.

Make sure people dont exceed allotted time. Afterwards, ask them to share their feelings: how did they feel reading alone in a group?

20-30 minutes

5

Conclusion

1) Thank them.

2) Remind them three TISA vows (1. I accept myself with my stutter. 2. I accept others who stutter. 3. I will try to serve other PWS).

3) Agree on venue, time and agenda for the next meet.

4) Say Good bye!

The three vows are the philosophical foundation of TISA. They promote better attitude.

Be as participatory / democratic as possible while deciding venue, time and agenda. But if no progress is being made and time is short, take the initiative and decisions, as the Chapter coordinator.

20 minutes.


 

 

 

Total~ 2 hrs

NB: Item 1 & 2 above may change or become brief after the group has been meeting for sometime regularly. 3 & 4 above are the core activities which should be changed with other relevant activities in every meeting (See TISA Manual in the file section of Yahoo group “IPWS” for more examples). The most important thing is to encourage people to talk, and to praise them when they do talk. Make sure that everyone relaxes and talks.

 

Last Updated on Tuesday, 11 August 2009 13:40
 
A SHG in London PDF Print E-mail
Posted by Nitin Tomer   
Thursday, 23 July 2009 14:19

I am giving a brief information about the the self help group I go to. It organised by someone called Paul Cunningham in London. By organise I mean he took the responsibility of getting the people together. Me and few others decided to join his group and help him run it. It occurs once every month, on a sunday. everyone is informed by email. The total number of members is 22, though not everyone may come on a meeting. I remember the smallest size we had was 5, the largest 17. When it started, it had 6 members. I joined 2 months after, when i heard about it from a friend of mine (member of the BSA).
We meet at Paul's house who kindly decided to give his living room to that meeting once a month. One is chosen as the moderator that meeting and then he introduces the new members if any. Anybody who is new wishes to introduce themselves can do so. We all sit in a circle facing each other. Then anybody who wishes to practise saying their name can do so. They raise their hand and the moderator asks him/her to speak. That way there is no confusion.
Then we talk about what happened that month, anything they want to share , regarding some problems they faced because of their stammer, frustuations, hurdles, people's reactions etc. Also they share what things the have done despite/overcoming their stammering (like someone gave a presentation of his college project, interviews, made a phone call etc) that month. This usually last 15-30 mins.
then for each meeting we chose different topics. Different topics we did discuss during our monthly meetings are:

a) interviews: We discuss the problems we face when we go for interviews. what are our fears. how we react. We do mock interviews. We share what things help us do well in the interviews.
b) future plans: What we plan to do in the future. what is stopping/holding us back. How much we think our stammer is holding us from our future plans/dreams. what possible things we can do despite our stammer
c) Relationships: How is our relaiotnships woth our spouses, brothers and sisters, parents, colleagues, classmates, neighbours etc. How is it being affected by our stammer. how they see us. How they see our stammer. How to improve relationships despite our stammer.
d) Work: Interaction with colleagues. bad experiences, good experiences
e) Phone calls: How much making phone calls is problem. What we do, how we react.
f) Speaking circle: Participants would stand up in front of a semi circle of people and speak about any topic for 1-5 minutes. This is to practice talking in front of poeple. But sometimes , someone may choose just to stand in front of the peolpe and say nothing. This may sound strange, but standing in front of the group of people for 2-3 minutes, silently, looking at them and they looking at you is not easy specially for a stammerer. For a stammerer siltent is very frightening. So people practice just to stand up in front of a group of poeple siltently first. Once they are comfortable, they start talking about any topic they like. Its main purpose is not to be a good speaker, but to practice being comfortable talking in front of a group of people, so quality of talk, topic, quality of presentation is not important. We are always obsessed with being perfect/fluent speaker so the exercise is to be comfortable without being perfect/

All these discussions last 30 mins to 1 hour. People raise their hand to give opinion. someone can give a comment on what the other said. At the end, people discuss the positive things they should do to overcome the problem(like phone call fear, not being able to communicate in a relationship, fear of giving presentation), so that not only we discuss our issues, fears etc but also leave the meeting with a postive mindset.
If someone does not want to talk , he is not forced to do so. He can remain silent and listen to what others say. However he/she is encouraged by others to speak.
Everyone is provided equal opportunity to speak by the moderator.
It is a good opportunity for everyone to practice the speech technique they learnt in a speech therapy. I have not gone to any speech therapy so I practice speaking slowly in the meet. Everyone is patient for the speaker to speak slowly and wait for him to finish even if he is havng a big block.
Then near the end of the meeting, a moderator for the next meet is chosen, usually someone volunteers to be the moderator.
The meeting last 2 hours roughly.
then sometimes we decide to go to a restaurant together (not always).
To keep the meeting running properly, everybody should be punctual.

Also we keep in touch with members by phone, emails or meet up sometimes. When I have a bad day (like stammers more while talking to my boss and feeling low), i call up or email or meet up one or more people from the group and talk about it. We provide word of encouragement to each other. or suggestions which helped us. Its a support network.

Hope the information has been helpful. Please write back letting me know. What kind of information would you like , what kind of help do you expect, what things you want/can to do in forming a self help group. Remember a self help group can start with just 2 people . Once you start it, people will join it. Number is not important, what you share and get out of the sharing is important.

BTW, here is a good resource link about stutter/stammer:

http://www.mnsu.edu/comdis/isad9/isadcon9.html

Last Updated on Tuesday, 11 August 2009 13:41
 
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