Hello kind donor! Thank you for clicking the link and coming this far. Please read the brief story below so you get a clear picture of who and what you are supporting. 

Our daughter Ali will be 9 years old on June 22nd 2018. She is one of the brightest, funniest and kindest kids you could ever hope to meet. But she struggles a lot with reading and writing. Around the age at which her reading and writing should have been progressing we noticed that she was having some issues. She could not identify words, became very upset trying to read and her hand writing was difficult to make out. We immediately set about trying to find a way to help her and after an assessment through the Dyslexia Association of Ireland we discovered that she is in the high one percentile of dyslexics. She tells us that letters jump around the page when she tries to read and that she struggles to recognise letters and link them to sounds. After learning this about Ali we have tried as much as possible to understand dyslexia and support her as she learns to cope with it.

Dyslexia has nothing to do with whether someone is smart or not, it is a condition. A condition that affects one in every ten people. Some people go through life never knowing why they struggle to read or why they have a smaller attention span than others. In the past these people were consigned to the fringes of school life as they were deemed to be of lower intelligence. This no doubt damages their confidence, their self esteem and limits them in what they want to do in their lives.

We try everyday to make sure that this is not the case with Ali. We know how smart Ali is, we know how special her intellect is, how creative she is, and how massive her heart is. It is not nice to see her fearful of her weekly spelling test in school where she knows she won’t do well, or that she can’t type things into the computer because she can’t get the spelling right. All of these things have an effect on her, but we try to lift her spirits by reminding her about all the other things she is very good at. She is an incredible problem solver, she sees things in a way that no one else would think of. Her imagination is so vivid and rich that sometimes she will say or do something that can make you really stop and take notice of her as a thinker and she is truly one of the funniest little girls you could ever meet.

With the help of the DAI we have seen Ali progress and make advances in her learning which help to boost her self esteem and keep her involved at school. We always fear that dyslexia could be something that adversely affects her life, but we are willing to do whatever it takes to see that she gets the best chance possible. She is very aware that she has the condition and we speak to her all the time about not worrying about it because it does not define her, and she will overcome it simply because she is so bright and resourceful. That’s why on September 29th 2018 I will jump out of a plane to raise money for the DAI and I would ask that you please contribute to the cause so that I can show Ali how many people are behind her while she tries to find a way to cope and have the best chance in life despite her dyslexia. I will be jumping with 25 other people, each of us representing a letter of the alphabet. I will be the letter A for Ali. I hope that you can see your way to supporting this cause and helping a wonderful little girl continue to be wonderful. Thank you. 

P.S. – Here is a little video about dyslexia that you might like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFExDAggmQY