Shine your light

Account manager, Gary West, has just completed a Land’s End to John o’ Groats motorbike relay ride to help raise funds to build a sensory garden for children with complex needs.

Gary’s stepdaughter, Caitlin, has autism and his wife, Kelly, works with adults with learning disabilities. Together as a family, they are raising awareness of communication barriers, to promote better social inclusion for people with disabilities.

‘Over the last few years it has become more and more apparent that more needs to be done to help individuals with communication difficulties,’ said Gary. ‘My stepdaughter, Caitlin, has been making it her mission to raise awareness and promote social inclusion for all. The relay ride was Caitlin’s idea to help raise some money towards funding a sensory garden at her school.

‘Caitlin has also created a Facebook page, called “Shine your Light” where she demonstrates the use of Makaton, which is a form of sign language. She’s amazing at it and gets a lot of people following her. She creates videos using the signs to interpret songs and this has inspired us as a family, to record the song, “Something inside so strong.”

‘We asked a number of nationally recognised companies to join us in raising awareness and we’re now in the process of videoing companies recording the sign language to the song. These include Royal Mail, Specsavers, Co-op and many more. The song will hopefully be released in June. It’s really exciting.

Gary, his family and other fellow riders left Land’s End on Friday 31 May and after only using A and B roads, arrived at John o’ Groats on Sunday 2 June. All the riders who joined them paid £10 for the privilege, with the money going to Shropshire, Staffordshire and Cheshire Blood Bikes, Burton Albion Community Trust, and Caitlin’s special school, Fountains High School.

If you would like to help Gary and his family raise the £2,000 they need to fund a sensory garden for children with complex needs, you can visit their fundraising page by clicking here.