Lord Mayor of Portsmouth David Fuller donates £1,000 to Losing My Sight UK

The Lord Mayor of Portsmouth has donated £1,000 to a sightloss charity.
The Lady Mayoress of Portsmouth Leza Tremorin presented Losing Our Sight a cheque for £1,000 on behalf of The Lord Mayor from his 'City of Portsmouth Lord Mayor's Appeal Fund'. From left, Losing My Sight founder Dave Taylor, Lady Mayoress Leza Tremorin, David Shervill, and Losing My Sight director Elena Sommers 
Picture: Malcolm Wells (190613-2526)The Lady Mayoress of Portsmouth Leza Tremorin presented Losing Our Sight a cheque for £1,000 on behalf of The Lord Mayor from his 'City of Portsmouth Lord Mayor's Appeal Fund'. From left, Losing My Sight founder Dave Taylor, Lady Mayoress Leza Tremorin, David Shervill, and Losing My Sight director Elena Sommers 
Picture: Malcolm Wells (190613-2526)
The Lady Mayoress of Portsmouth Leza Tremorin presented Losing Our Sight a cheque for £1,000 on behalf of The Lord Mayor from his 'City of Portsmouth Lord Mayor's Appeal Fund'. From left, Losing My Sight founder Dave Taylor, Lady Mayoress Leza Tremorin, David Shervill, and Losing My Sight director Elena Sommers Picture: Malcolm Wells (190613-2526)

The organisation, which was started in 2016, recently ran out of funding and was at risk of losing its room at Fratton community centre.

The donation will provide enough money to continue there for another six months, while it looks for more funding.

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The charity’s founder Dave Taylor said: ‘The funding from the Lord Mayor’s office is extremely important because we are able to continue for another year, so that gives us another year for raising more funds. This is a crucial day for us.

‘At the moment there isn’t enough focus on smaller charities, especially on visual impairment charities. We seem to get knocked back a bit, and not noticed much.’

Losing My Sight UK is aimed at developing a network for people with visual impairments. This gets them involved in activities such as fitness classes and swimming.

Chairwoman Elena Sommers said: ‘Sometimes blind people are isolated and they don’t go out by themselves. But the money brings people an opportunity to participate and gives them a chance to go out.’

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The money was given to the charity at one of the Lord Mayor’s vintage tea mornings, an event part of a year-long fundraising scheme.

‘We’re honoured to have over £1,000 to give to Losing My Sight UK.’ said the Lord Mayor of Portsmouth, David Fuller. ‘We’re helping them, so that they can keep going.’

Each month, a different Portsmouth charity in need of funding will be given a donation.

‘We thought that it was fitting to help smaller, local organisations,’ said Cllr Fuller. ‘We wanted to help people in the city.

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‘We’re hopefully going to have a lot of fun on the way, this is the first event of very many. I want to raise as much money as we can for local Portsmouth charities.’

The next fundraising vintage tea event will take place at 11am on July 4 at the Banqueting Suite in Portsmouth Guildhall and costs £3 to attend.

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