Torch Trust have been around for more than 70 years. What started as a simple need to engage with someone in a Bible study in someone’s home has become an organisation, called Torch Trust, which exists to help people who struggle with sight in some way.
Organising holidays, help for churches who want to better engage with people who have any form of visual impairment, and translating published books into large print versions, audio versions or braille.
For more information visit the Torch Trust website - torchtrust.org
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I'm here today with Sarah who is something to do with a torch trust we'll get into that in a minute we'll get into her life in a minute but first of all hello Sarah. Hi nice to be here. How was your day treating you so far? Yeah well today it is a rainy summer day so between that and tech playing me up it's not the best summer but it's a good day all the same. So uh rain and yes that's a typical British summer's day really isn't it? Yeah what else did we talk about? Well this is the thing people say all British why do you you always talking about the weather? Yes you don't understand why it gets so exciting. Yeah because it's different topic every day. Yeah absolutely right so for those who don't know about torch trust just give us a bit of an overview what is torch trust all about? Yeah so torch trust was founded in the 1950s by a couple who accidentally happened to have a blind girl come to their bible study for young people and they then suddenly realized that it's really hard to be blind and to engage with things the same as your peers and so that's the route to torch and so we want to be an organization where people who are blind or partially sighted had the opportunity to encounter Jesus and to grow in their Christian faith and to thrive in Christian community so we want people to know that they're somewhere they belong and there's somewhere where there are people who have been through what they're going through and maybe start a little bit slightly further ahead on the path and we believe that Jesus is the one who can give hope in the midst of trauma and sight loss is a massive trauma so regardless of what people believe we're open and we want people to come and find support but we're also unashamedly a Christian based organization so that's why we do what we do but we'll welcome anybody regardless of the need. I love how I hear there's so many times with ministries I just think oh I like this and then I find out why so it started because there was a need and so it said how do we make this need okay there's someone who's blind or partially sighted and well how do we help them engage in what we're doing what we can't as we are so let's adapt and change to who they are to enable them to become part of what we do I love stories that begin with we met someone with the need because when you look at the Bible that's exactly what Jesus did and it's so often he met the need first yeah completely and it's incredible isn't it if you see the need and you adapt it's amazing what can grow out of them I've really doubts that Ron and Stella when they're first welcoming this girl into the Bible study would have seen that we would still be doing things based on their actions but nearly 70 years later and yet here we are what a legacy that's a legacy and I actually spoke with a friend of mine at Ames Rachel she actually does sign language she went to university and we're doing one call switched to sign language fully so now that's what she does but she was talking about how her interest developed because someone came to her church who she couldn't communicate with because they were I think was it blind or partially sighted it doesn't really matter it was the point she couldn't communicate so very similar to the story you were sharing of the beginning of torch trust how do I communicate with this person because my usual method isn't going to work so what else do I do yeah completely cool so um what's torch trust doing today you talked about the beginnings of it what what are you actually involved in today that people go think oh let me get hold of torch trust because they could help me yeah so we have lots and lots of accessible Christian literature so if there is a Christian book that has been published and that is inaccessible in its published form so normally just standard book and if that is inaccessible to somebody then we will transcribe that and provide it in a format that is accessible to them so that could be large print we offer three different large print options it could be an audio recording of it or it could be Braille depending on the person and what their particular need is we're able to do that so if anyone listening say I really want to read this book but I can't get hold of it well contact us because we're able to transcribe it and to get it done in a way that works for them because we want everything that is accessible to those with sight to be accessible to those with aren't if you haven't and so that's yeah that's a large part of what we do and that includes things like daily bible reading notes we publish those so again they can be reading the same ones as sighted people are on the same day so that up to date and the another thing that we do is holidays so I guess you can probably imagine that going on holiday as a blind and partially sighted person can feel quite overwhelming and I'm amazed at how well people seem to know the way around their homes and how they can do things and how they've adapted but in a new place that isn't necessarily set up for someone with sight loss that's really intimidating so we run holidays to different places where we have morning bible devotions we go on trips but we play games and we do you know times of prayer together a community holiday that is geared specifically to people with sight loss and so they're available throughout the summer and we also are involved in a radio station that goes out on an R&I bees radio so again just giving little hints of hope and to people and who are experiencing sight loss and so much more that I've probably forgotten in the moment but anything to do with helping people with sight loss access things that question sighted people can and in the bible it is a big one I forgot and so we're currently just finished transcribing the latest version of the NIV into the newest braille page and so that is going to be available very shortly for people to get hold of just words always important what just describe braille because braille to me I made you think oh it's it's dots on a page which is probably not the best description of it could you just give me a slightly better version than my explanation of braille yeah well the thing that I've learned most in is we don't print braille we emboss braille and I still call it print but it's not it's embossed so it's it is basically six dots that are raised up in different formats so it's possible to read braille with your eyes because once you know what each of the dots mean you can decode it and in fact a braille person and a braille reading person said to me a couple of weeks ago that we have it easy as braille readers because we only got six dots to learn you sighted people I've got lots and lots of little squiggles that can mean anything so it's also kind of here a really positive way of thinking it but also it is basically that it's just a code of six six dots which is red primarily with well red with fingertips and if you haven't learned it as a child it can be incredibly difficult to learn as an adult and they're I believe not impossible but tricky because we don't have the same sensitivity in our fingertips that I see that I love learning I didn't know it was six dots I thought it was in my brain I thought it was somehow 26 letters the alphabet conversed into a dot formula but that's that's actually quite cool it is let me think of a die um yeah the six on the dice um it's kind of like that that's kind of year the six how they're laid out um and then they're just raised um into different each one raised in a different way means a different letter yeah you mentioned a minute ago there that is new braille code is it sort of an updated version do people have to then relearn braille again yeah so braille is fascinating um I found it absolutely fascinating to get to grips with and I am not an expert um but in the same way that our computers and laptops need updating from time to time braille gets updated um so it could be um new contractions because obviously you can imagine um having to read the letters of every word um one by one is quite time consuming and so they have contractions built in that means they make it even harder for someone to learn braille in some ways because it's not even just memorizing a letter you got to know what the contractions are and it just gets updated um in that way that it's more accessible to more people wow okay cool I always say every day is the only day I that I genuinely like that um just coming back to the the fact that you're transcribing books so it's going to large print or an audio version or braille what what's the process for that so somebody just says I've got this book someone's giving it to me can you translate it is that how it works or are you going more to sort of publishers and we'll take this book and translate it it's new publishers so publishers are generally pretty happy for people to have access to their um to their products because they want people to read them that's why they published them so we've got relationships with various Christian publishers and that they will send us the files um and then we can get them transcribed say people will we will we say we never charge more than the recommended retail price of the book um so the book is 999 for sighted personally 999 in braille um obviously it costs us a lot more than that but we don't want people um to be disadvantaged in terms of what they can ask us so we charge the RFE so we've got books into large print braille and also to audio but we've always got holidays you talked about the Bible as well are there any other things that torch trust um can do in terms of support I mean do you support churches or is that something that you don't do or want to do well no no we did do that can you I forget something you're right and yeah we have a project called sight loss friendly church so if you can imagine walking into a church for the first time and you can't see there's lots of really obvious things you can think about in terms of well I don't know where to go and I don't know where the seats are I don't know how to get a cup of coffee um but even things like I don't know who sat next to me I don't know if my friend is here um I don't know you know kind of what I can see I can't see anything so I don't know what's happening but that's if you're totally blind but even if your partially sighted actually going to church can have some of that same things maybe you can't see peripheral and so you can't see who's either side of you um maybe you can't see the screen because the screen's super cool and there's got all these images and colors going on that you just can't read anymore and there's just lots of little things that we as churches don't think about the impact on people with disability when we do them and they're not bad things but it's actually how are we helping people to access the content and when they run site is a problem and often people don't admit when they're losing their sight in a church and so they they maybe won't ask for help because it feels a bit embarrassing to say oh I can't read that anymore and so actually it's good to have people who are advocates saying hey have we as churches thought about how we're doing this and why we're doing this I guess in a similar way to the stereotype of of somebody losing their hearing as they get older and it's just an aging issue okay you start to lose your hearing I wouldn't actually have thought people are losing their sight in the same way but because we get older our eyes change and actually things that are further away are holding to spot so yeah it's it's not even just about helping people who can see nothing it's about the fact that what people can see is going to change over time too yeah completely and actually a lot of us will end up with some poor sight loss it's like 20% of us I mean mainly when we get to over 65 years of centuries ago massively but some people will have sight loss issues much longer I saw a little video a while back and it was this chap who was trying to say look when we're talking about sight loss or visually you know struggles it's not necessary that everything he's completely blank and he had these was it different glasses and he all these different things like well this is one thing where everything's kind of fuzzy or perhaps you've got sort of the the middle view it's sort of blurred or blackened out a little bit and he was trying to explain that there's there's such a range of visual ability from being able to see clearly in focus to seeing nothing but actually there's masses of stuff in between those two that affects lots of other people yeah and completely and that's that's the biggest thing I like is I just assumed that if you're blind you're blind it's very very black and white it really isn't and there's so many shades of gray and you also become very aware of all the visual language you use to achieve and describe it which is quite ironic and but you know most people who are registered blind would have some sight and they would have something but it's not really meaningful they can't really do a lot with that and they also can normally tell the difference between light and dark so if you've ever seen a blind person wearing sunglasses and they're like why or they still got that perception of light and dark and actually their eyes can be more sensitive so they still need to wear eye protection in that way but it is it's a much more complicated place if you're so much easier if it was just okay you hear the seal you can't but the spectrum within that is massive let's just talk a bit about your your journey into into talk stress and what what's your your background as a Christian I mean are you got you know a church background was it a pole on Damascus I think my wife and I completely different mine was just I went to church I thought yeah it's good this my wife was very much wow this is a spiritual thing going on and God's real so we have very very different experiences so what's what's your what's your background yeah so we're gripping a church growing family but it never really seemed to mean anything as at home we saw what we did on Sunday I never really remember hearing the gospel growing up and at 14 we stopped going and let's say yeah parents ended up in quite a messy divorce and so 14 just church became it dropped off the radar of things that we did and because life had changed so much at that point I ended up spending longer at school in the computer room with a girl in the year old who's a year old with me it dates me doesn't it the fact that was a computer room at school I know it was a long time ago now and I noticed there was one night of the week she was never there I was like where are you where do you go this one night of the week and she went to a Christian discussion grade and I was like well I grew up going to church so I'm a question and I went along it didn't harm that it was joined with the boys school and I was at an old girls school so you know I was a teenager and I went there for a few months and I always just felt kind of indifferent to these people I don't really know why I don't know what the difference is and I remember being in the car with my mum months and months later and there was a church I had a sign outside of it that says if you want to know the difference in your life ask Jesus into it and I suddenly had a real moment of clarity oh I know about Jesus those people know Jesus and so I went home made some form of commitment that night and still had quite a messy teenage years and then when I went to university so when I got stuck into a church and during the Christian meeting me in there and yeah that was that was kind of it okay um so what's your journey to talk stress then you've that that's your your Christian story feel like but what's your your journey into what you're doing now with talk um yeah hilarious really because um yeah when I first found out about the job I was like but I know nothing about disability so why would this give a job for me and which you know it's a it's a good question but I sort of been since I graduated I worked for a church a couple years but the rest of the time I've been in student ministry I'm so working with Christian unions and universities to begin with and then more recently working with international students and he'd come and study so many of them don't have a chance to hear the gospel in their home country and then they're here and it's like oh you you could meet Jesus so that's been my background and so when this job came up I was like I just don't think that's for me um and I saw him someone about it and they said yeah but this job is all about just like worship and evangelism that's what you've been passionate about from the beginning like okay there and so yeah that's that's what convinced me to apply um for the job to watch they not knowing much about disability I've learned a lot um but also it's another little subculture so in a way working cross-cultural international students set me up pretty well to kind of be like okay this is just a different culture what's what's right in this culture what's true in this culture what the felt needs how do we help these people to meet Jesus and to look at more um they're the same questions it's just works out slightly differently and how we how we listen how we respond yeah completely yeah um so that's how you came to your job now um what what what's a day look like for you normally I mean it's it's always gonna be different but what would what an average day look like I mean I just want to answer say there's no she has an average day but that doesn't really answer your question does it um so let's talk about I'll show about Monday the week so I was in our offices which are in Market Harbor in Lustershire so as in there we had um staff prime meeting first thing in the morning did a bit of admin leadership team met for a bit um trust about some things and pride um spent the afternoon getting things ready for our trustees meeting but also chatting about the holiday that I'm going on next week and with talk um and you're talking to our client services team who you get the comment who you get phone calls in from people um after advised or wanting to borrow resources from a library and all of those sorts of things um yeah I think that's probably the main bits of the day um yeah so it's a real mix of people stuff so and that's what I love is that actually my job is all about people and you know it's helping people to to see Jesus in the midst of whatever they're in so even as a staff team we are all Christian and so being able to meet together to pray together on a hard day when you're just like how is this gonna happen what's gonna happen here um it's about okay let's pray the Lord knows we don't need to know everything we can trust that he is in control of whatever the situation is amen to that those primes together are so precious not there's a team um we really struggle because we have presenters all over the place doing different things so we've tried for certain to find that moment when we can sit and there isn't really one because just the way that we do stuff so we have to find another way of doing things um how big a team's touching you're you're matching all these different people it sounds like a really good integrated team what sort of how many people have you got working with you so there's 20 um on the staff team so there's a mixture so there's client services here with the people who you'll speak to if you phone um torch or email asking for something we then have um finance team who help you know just make sure that we're doing things the way we should be so finance and operations and HR and those kind of functions we then have the bit that I got really excited about on my interview day and which is production so it's basically a factory floor and where we have braille multiple braille embossers and so we can produce things from different sizes um different things um also printers um for the large print things and the library and so all of that is done on site um so when I'm in the office it's just the other side the door in fact sometimes when they turn on one of the binding machines you can feel it like you retire body kind of um yeah kind of goes up and down with it um yeah and then we also have a development team who work they largely work um in home now but just trying to think how do things differently so one of them is currently doing um a new podcast um just actually what it looks like to have faith um as a visually impaired or blind person we also um in the hopefully later stages of starting a chaplaincy service for people um but also near all the audio stuff as well so yeah there's a lot to keep everybody busy it does sound lovely I like the fact that you've basically got I suppose a glorified printers really but what just not what you necessarily find on your high street to print your dissertation or whatever um it's a lot different and it's hilarious because it's again a whole area I need nothing about so um okay I've learned a lot largely it's not a printer it's an embossing it comes to braille it's my main thing I've been taking away cool um Sarah thank you uh for sharing some of this stuff about it I I know that I've got to traverse that mostly we spoke to spoke very highly of you uh because he as we were talking just off air but he actually had complete loss from sight to completely unsighted for a period of time someone reached out to him from tortoise and it just provided such hope in it's terrible language now I'm thinking about it but in such a dark time for him literally um it's a very very you know difficult time and literally he went dark for him so he had questions like well how do I boil a cup of tea I you know scolding water I can't see I can feel the mug I can feel a kettle I can get water in the kettle but the bits after that actually this this could be quite serious if someone found some like a beepy thing that you can put in a mug so when he's filling the mug which he could learn to do he's not going to start pouring water all over the surface all those sorts of stuff we don't necessarily think about doing you have no idea whatsoever and even you know getting dressed in the morning you can feel the topping you can feel trousers but you've no idea if they go and we if you haven't got someone with you then yeah that lot that complete loss of independence is not said um thank you for what you're doing with torch trust uh having supposed to drive up just hearing the uh how much more he relaxed he was that somebody has said I can help you with some of these things that is so key um and I guess that's that billboard that you saw in the same way actually there's some help for you and I guess my kind of one of my conclusions is we don't normally do these but do you know there's always somebody to help yeah that is always something that we can do to help someone somehow yeah and so quite often it's quite a little thing yeah it's a tiny little thing um so in our office we have a call I think called bumpers or bumpons um little hard dots that denote different things and just a little thing like the one the one that has one on is always the decap job just a really simple thing you don't think about how else do you enable decap or capia it's just that straightforward um but those little things make a massive difference for someone in terms of independence and they just how do people find out about torch trust what i'm guessing you've got a website can you give us that yeah sure um we are at torch trust org so it's our website um it should be accessible for screen readers if anybody is needing that um but you can also email um info at torch trust org and as i say client services um take phone calls every day well Monday to Thursday they take phone calls um and the rest of the time there's an answer phone and that's on 01858 438 260 just give us that number one more time yeah 01858 438 260 and people can wake up saying help i don't know what to do yeah and they'll get through to a lovely team who will do their best to help or direct them because sometimes we're not the best people to help but we'll put you in the direction of worries fabulous um Sarah from torch trust thank you for your time today um i love chatting people and i love living stuff that i had no concept of like um braille is not printing it's important yeah thank you thanks did you know pure 24/7 radio has a shop well we do you can buy merchandise while supporting the work that we do here simply head over to www.pure247radio.org/shop that's www.pure247radio.org/shop
