Dare to be Different!
Welcome to Dare to be Different, our new campaign for the spring of 2019, aimed at raising awareness of autism, the work of the Sycamore Trust and a little money as well!
Our plan is to ask everyone in the three boroughs in which we work; Barking & Dagenham, Havering and Redbridge to wear something different to school or to work or just around the house on Friday 5th April 2019, whilst at the same time donating £1 to our work here at the Sycamore Trust.
The idea behind the campaign is that autistic people are just normal people who see the world slightly differently, so we're asking everyone to dress a little differently on that day to show they care. Whatever works for you is ok, it can be anything you want; it might be odd socks or your pyjamas. It might be a dinner suit or a football kit; whatever you decide is ok with us because celebrating the differences is what we're all about.
We're hoping that lots of people embrace the idea and send us their photos of people dressed differently and tweet them to #DARETOBEDIFFERENT and see if we can't get everyone in Barking & Dagenham, Havering and Redbridge talking about autism. We hope that it will raise awareness of ASD as well as who we are and what we do. As a hidden disability, autism is almost impossible to spot so by doing this we are hoping that people will be a bit more sympathetic towards others who are perhaps a bit different to the conventional idea of normal.
There are over 700,000 people with ASD in the United Kingdom, so almost 3 million family members are affected. It's entirely possible that we all know someone with ASD, but maybe we aren't aware of it! If you'd like to join in, please download the pack by clicking the button at the bottom of this page.
Throughout the spring of 2019, we will be using our social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Linked In as well as asking our friends in the local press for their help to publicise #DARETOBEDIFFERENT, so anyone who decides to get involved can be sure that they will get plenty of publicity. We will be announcing a couple of high profile endorsements in the new year and we have got some events planned which we hope will raise the profile of the campaign and the Sycamore Trust in general. We chose 5th April because it is World Autism Awareness Week from 1st-7th April, but anyone who wants to take part can do so wherever they wish, because of course, it's ok to be different!
Thank you!
Dare to be Different