2008 - SAP's 5th Birthday

2008 is our 5th birthday, we have been running all this time and sometimes we forget to celebrate. The Committee decided that this year we would let someone else do all the work and we would go to Pearl River, a Chinese restaurant in Kings Lynn. The date was set and we all met up outside, Maureen was the first there and the rest came not long after. The staff were very good, because we had not booked in advance they did not know we were coming, they asked us to wait on the settees next to the fish tank while they sorted out a table. The manager then asked us to follow him, the table they set up for us was wonderful. it was huge and round and had a lazy suzan in the middle so we could spin it around to get at any food we wanted. Everyone ordered drinks and the staff brought bowls of prawn crackers for us to eat while we looked at the menu. There were so many things to try and some of them we did not recognise at all so some of us decided to order small portions of lots of different things and share them. This was great fun and everyone dug in to try new food. We all talked about the past 5 years and how much hard work it had been but how we were all pleased that we had stuck with it and worked together. We all really enjoyed the restaurant and have said that we want to go back there for our Christmas Meal, we will ask the other members if they would like evening or daytime and we will then book because there will be even more of us. The staff are fantastic and are very helpful, the building is easy to get around and we had a wonderful time. Your should go there if you can.

Happy birthday to all of us!!

SAP Delivers Training To Cultural Services

Lily Norman (Secretary)

My name is Lily and I have been with SAP since we started. I can train people and I do the training and I train others to do it too. I am very good at it. We were asked by Norfolk Council to do some training. The people coming to the training were all from museums and libraries. We did the training in Yarmouth at the time and Tides Museum. This is an interesting place and they let us look around but we are going again to spend a whole day there because its interesting. The place made us feel hungry because we could smell smoked fish.

Peter Dade (Chair)

David and Chris came and picked up Peter and me from my house, Peter stayed by mine because we had an early start at 6.45am. we drove to Yarmouth and got there at 9am. This gave us enough time to set up, and for me to run through with Peter what we were going to do – this was Peters first time training people on how they should work with people with learning disabilities and difficulties. We did very well and had lots of people at the training. We finished the day at 4pm and got to my house in Lynn at 6.30 – I was very tired so was Peter but we did a good job and I enjoyed myself and look forward to doing this again.

Chris (volunteer)

My name is Chris and I am a member of SAP and support Lil who has asked me to say a bit about the training day. We had nineteen trainees from Cultural Services, this was a very lively crowd and they all asked lots of questions. Below are a few of the comments taken from the evaluation forms. In response to the question why have you come to this training some people said – “To be able to deliver a more focused library service to people with Learning Disabilities; “To give me more confidence and be able to help people” “Improve awareness of and effects of special needs and disabilities” After the training people said “Very interesting. All the course leaders were well informed and good advocates” “Very interesting, thought provoking, well run, good discussions” “The course was great! It was very informative and gave me much more confidence in the library” It was a very good day, Lily is a very good trainer and has great courage talking about her life. It was good to see and hear Peter taking an active part as this was his first time. All in all a very interesting and enjoyable day.