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August Account
August 2000
At the end of another financial year, Martin Littler looks back on a good year and a chat with Princess Anne. Plus Distance Learning Units, the Inclusive Team outside 'The Swan' in Dobcross and Harold Wilson at Huddersfield Station.
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Princess Anne works hard. Before opening ISEC 2000, the International Special Needs Congress in Manchester, she had already visited a Young Offenders Unit and then a Citizens Advice Bureau in Salford. She chatted, drew interesting special needs parallels with the young offenders she had visited, remembered that I had been a teacher, shook hands (ungloved) with Helen Melhuish, made a good speech to ISEC and then shot off to open a country event in Hampshire. If you travel and meet people you will know that this is a tough day! Except the Helen Melhuish bit. |
 Inclusive directors Trish Hornsey and Martin Littler with HRH the Princess Royal |
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Helen Melhuish designed and managed the ISEC 2000 Web site, which played a major part in attracting a record 1021 delegates from 98 countries. She is also responsible for the EENET inclusion site and the International Development Consortium, IDDC site. Both these sites have considerable input from Save the Children, and Princess Anne mentioned EENET in her speech. I am proud to say that Inclusive Technology provide and manage all three sites, free of charge, in order to promote the inclusion, care and opportunities of learners with special needs world-wide.
Helen "Nine Sites" Melhuish, as she is known, is our development manager and is currently finishing the ICTS national teacher training Web site. This site is central to the provision of computer training to teachers working with children who have severe and complex special needs under the £320 million New Opportunities Fund.
ICTS is a consortium of the leading organisations in this field, RNIB, Downs Syndrome Association, ACE Centres, Cenmac, the Call Centres and the Advisory Unit who have got together to provide unparalleled in-depth knowledge across most aspects of this field. The consortium is led by Inclusive Technology. Inclusive's development director Trish Hornsey, has just completed the monumental task of editing the twelve Distance Learning Units which form the backbone of the training. This wonderful compilation of expertise and practical activity is available in print and on-line as part of the ICTS training. A sample Distance Learning Unit is included on the public area of the ICTS site: www.inclusive.net.
We have just completed a good year so we took our team to the pub for lunch. No expense spared here. Our financial director, Helen Carr is still finalising the accounts. Helen is a Chartered Accountant and likes to get things right. However I can tell you already that the team supplied £1.8 million ($US 2.7m) of special needs resources, 43% more than the same period last year. Shelley and Michael processed and shipped 7,846 orders for 30,000 items while Alison collected and banked £2.2 million.
Well done all! Here is the whole team except Debbie Crook, our graphic designer, who will paste herself in later.
Front row: Michael Walters, resource technician; Roger Bates, information director; Trish Hornsey, development director; Martin Littler, managing director; Helen Carr, finance director.
Second row: Simon Melhuish, editor; Alison Thorpe, conference organisation and credit control; Shelley Evans, operations manager; David Hornsey, graphic designer; Tim Adshead, post-sales support; Helen Melhuish, development manager; Nigel Wallace, information manager; Stephen Littler, html editor; Theresa Dent; html editor.
Inclusive sells BIGmack to MacDonalds!
It's not a whopper! Last week we got a call from MacDonalds restaurant in Twickenham. What did they want to buy? Two BIGmacks. They had collected for a local special school who had wanted two of the popular AbleNet speech output devices.
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Twickenham, of course, is more famous as the headquarters of Rugby Union, a rough ball game played by southerners and the Welsh. Coincidentally the northern version of this game was founded in the George Hotel, St Georges Square in my adopted home town of Huddersfield. The George Hotel has given shelter to Californian CEOs Arjan Khalsa of IntelliTools Inc and Terry Johnson of Mayer-Johnson Inc. It shares an impressive square with what John Betjeman called "the most splendid station facade in England … a stately home with trains running through it." |
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Recently Tony Blair visited the square and unveiled a statue of former Prime Minister and Huddersfield lad, Harold Wilson. Harold Wilson was the founder of the Open University, and thus, I suppose, the progenitor of the Distance Learning Unit. Inclusive Technology owes him a great debt! |
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Martin Littler