Zip it and help the Giving Voice campaign

The Speech and Language Society are a brand new society set up and run by us, speech and language therapy students. Speech and language therapists (SLT) assess and treat speech, language and communication problems in people of all ages to help them better communicate.

We also work with people who have eating and swallowing problems. Our society has been set up so students can get involved in the events we run throughout the year.

Due to the financial climate hitting all areas of the economy, the Royal College of Speech and Language therapists (RCSLT) realised that the SLT service may be under threat, and that the profession would be heading for a difficult period. As a result, RCSLT introduced the Giving Voice campaign.

Giving Voice will help speech and language therapy services demonstrate SLTs’ unique value to national and local decision makers, while showing evidence of their efficiency and value for money. The SLT society have run GV campaigns throughout the year to promote this. Our first event was at the Refresher’s fair, where we spoke to students about our profession. On the 10th of February we are running a bowling social… but with a difference.

We will all be taking on an exciting challenge called ‘Zip It!’ for a charity linked to SLT called ‘Afasic’. Afasic supports families, children and young people with language and communication problems. They are a great supporter of raising awareness and the work of the RALLI campaign as well.

The challenge is to stay silent and use only non-verbal methods of communication for 30 minutes! We will be asking students to donate a small donation of £1 or more to go to Afasic.

Afasic hopes that taking part in ‘Zip It!’ will help people to understand how frustrating and difficult everyday life can be for the many thousands of children and young people in the UK who have speech, language and communication disabilities.

Money raised from the ‘Zip It!’ challenge will go towards funding Afasic’s Parent Helpline Service (£35 keeps it open for an hour) and their unique specialist youth clubs (£50 pays for a young person to attend for a month).

This challenge will be part of the GV campaign as it is promoting our profession to the public by using non-verbal means to communicate. We will be promoting this on our Twitter and Facebook accounts and trying to get as many people to donate as possible!

From the University of Manchester Speech and Language Society