What we do at the Royal National College for the Blind!

Welcome and thank you for visiting the Fundraising area of the Royal National College for the Blind (RNC). There are lots of ways in which you can help to raise much needed funds to help people living with sight loss. We look forward to working with you and together we can make a difference.

Please take the time to read about what we do and how you can get involved and contact the fundraising team if you have any questions.

The Royal National College for the Blind's mission is:
To enable people who are blind or partially sighted, together with those who may have additional disabilities, to achieve their full potential and integration in society.

The Royal National College for the Blind (RNC) is a specialist residential college of further education for people who are blind or partially sighted. Our expertise and success has been built over 140 years, and each year we provide for around 200 individuals aged between 16 and 65.

Our students may have been blind from birth, have lost their sight due to accident or illness, or are losing their sight due to an eye condition. Many also have additional disabilities and/or learning difficulties.

The College offers around 60 academic and vocational courses in a wide range of subjects, delivered through individually tailored programmes. Each student also receives support of their personal and social development and residential, medical and wellbeing needs. This includes learning skills such as cooking, managing money and finances, taking care of their medical and personal health, washing their clothes, shopping, participating in exercise, joining social clubs or groups, preparing for a job interview…plus many more!

All of our teaching and training focuses on improving a person’s confidence and self esteem to help them to become independent and many of our students’ progress on to university, employment or self-employment.

As a charity we support each students learning by raising funds to ensure everyone has access to the best learning tools, equipment, and opportunities. This can be from the latest in Braille technology to participating in sports, activities and social situations that they may have not had the chance to do before.

With your help to support our work we can make a difference to the lives of many people with sight loss.

Thank you
 

Wellbeing Centre	Specialist equipment and activities
We are raising funds to refurbish part of an existing building to create a much needed purpose designed Wellbeing Centre for the students at the Royal National College for the Blind. Our specialist medical, counselling and wellbeing staff will be based in the Centre bringing these essential support services together into one place. It will provide additional rooms for a variety of therapy sessions, visiting consultants and group workshops. The Centre will be an inviting and comfortable environment which is easily accessible by all individuals. If you could help us to raise funds for this project please donate now or continue to look at our webpages for inspiration of how you could get involved. Thank you	RNC needs to raise funds each year to provide RNC students with specialist assistive technology and software. This is essential to enable them to progress effectively with their studies and to gain skills for future progression to Higher Education and the workplace. Computer equipment is an invaluable learning and social tool for people with sight loss but is, in most cases, unusable without specialist software and equipment. The siftware and equipment link together to allow them to ‘read’ the written word through speech, to use email, the internet and to produce assignments. This allows students to be independent and have privacy as they do not need the help of a support worker to read for them.  All of our students rely greatly on technology and have to keep up with its ever changing advances. It can become a lifeline and in many cases is the only medium available for them to access education.

If you would like to read more information about what courses the college can offer someone with sight loss please visit the 'Study' part of this website by clicking here.