Finding Charlie’s Voice helping raise awareness

FINDING Charlie’s Voice, a charity that helps raise awareness around verbal dyspraxia and other speech and language disorders, is holding their second annual virtual run this year which will take place from March 12-20.

The Lucan-based charity, which was founded by Evelyn Byrne, was inspired by her son Charlie (8) after he was diagnosed with verbal dyspraxia four years ago, which is a relatively rare life-long neurological speech disorder in which children have difficulty in making and co-ordinating the precise movements needed to produce clear speech with their mouths.

Finding Charlie’s Voice is centred around supporting all children with speech and language communication needs, which was set up on the foot of Charlie receiving his diagnosis and aims to raise awareness.

This year, the charity is running their second annual virtual run, with people of all ages and abilities to get involved. The race is being run in conjunction with Lucan Harriers and MyRunResults, with four distances offered – 1 mile, 5km, 10km and 10 miles and people can either walk or run all or any of the distances. Entry is €10 per adult and €7.50 for a child.

One major initiative that has come out of setting up Finding Charlie’s Voice are the development of communication boards, which is a physical aid for children that have difficulties speaking and communicating. Since launching the communication boards last year, the charity has provided 825 boards to schools across Ireland, as well as being shortlisted for the charity impact awards and receiving their official charity status.

Promotion of the charity run

“Last year was the first year that we ran it and we had just under 1,000 entries in the race,” Evelyn told The Echo. “What that allowed us to do effectively was to raise enough money to donate communication boards to schools around the country.

“We are doing the run again this year – it is about raising awareness, but it is also about looking to raise funds to do possibly a second round of donations of communication boards and also to support schools in 2022 and beyond who have children that have speech and language communication needs.”

To get involved in this year’s run for Finding Charlie’s Voice, you can go to MyRunResults and search ‘Finding Charlie’s Voice’.

Any schools looking to get involved in the run this year or raise money can also contact the charity at findingcharliesvoice@gmail.com

To find out more about Finding Charlie’s Voice, you can go to their Facebook page or on Instagram.