Support Our Birthday Appeal

Thursday 21st April 2022 - 14:23

21st April 2022

We're celebrating 44 years of our campaigns and community with a fundraiser — because people who stammer still face discrimination and ignorance.

Help us create a world where stammering is embraced as just a difference. Where no-one judges us on our stammer or the way we choose to deal with it.

🎈 Donate the cost of a birthday card, cake or present (see below)
🎈 Test your knowledge at our Birthday Quiz (bookings are now closed)
🎈 Celebrate with us and fellow members at our slap-up dinner at Ibérica, Canary Wharf (bookings are now closed).

Instead of a birthday card, donate £5 to help us create leaflets and resources for people who stammer, parents and speech & language therapists.

Instead of a birthday cake, donate £10 to help us take helpline calls and webchats from people who stammer and from the parents of children who stammer.

Donate £20 to help us change public perceptions of stammering, like with our Not Just One Day trailer, being shown at thousands of cinemas across the UK.

Use the form below and make an easy one-off donation.

OUR birthday EVENTS

We're celebrating our birthday in style, and would love for you to join us.

On Tuesday 10th May, come to the STAMMA Birthday Quiz. Join us on Zoom. You can even order a bottle of wine and a party hat to help us celebrate. (Sorry, bookings are now closed for this event)

On Wednesday 11th May, you're invited to the STAMMA Celebration Dinner. A three-course meal at Ibérica, Canary Wharf. (Sorry, bookings are now closed for this event)

OUR HISTORY

You can read all about our charity over the years on our History page. But here's a whistle-stop summary.

In 1978, Sparrow Harrison set up a network of stammering self-help groups. When the late speech & language therapist Peggy Dalton became involved, together they formed the Association for Stammerers (AfS), and made it a membership organisation. By the end of the 1980s, the AfS encompassed 80 self-help groups and 32 area representatives.

A black and white image of a board of trustees at a meeting, with one man standing and speaking A old photograph of a woman smiling at the camera
Co-founders (top): Sparrow Harrison chairing the very first AGM in 1979; (bottom) Peggy Dalton.

In 1995, we changed our name to the British Stammering Association, with membership widening to include parents of children who stammer and speech and language therapists. Peter Cartwright became the first Director, followed by Norbert Lieckfeldt, who led the charity for nearly 20 years.

When Norbert left in 2018, Jane Powell became CEO with ambitious plans in mind. In 2019, members voted to use the campaign name STAMMA and adopt a broader vision of stammering, including an outward demand that society accepts that some people stammer.

Achievements

So much has been achieved since Peggy and Sparrow first handwrote letters to members. Some of our biggest achievements have been to campaign successfully for pre-school children to receive speech & language therapy and train thousands of teachers to help pupils who stammer. We played an instrumental role in the 2008 Bercow Report, a full-scale government review into improving services for children with speech, language and communication needs, with virtually all the report's recommendations being accepted.

More recently, the Employers Stammering Network was an ambitious initiative to help employers realise the potential of employees who stammer and foster an inclusive workplace. With members including the Civil Service, EY, KPMG, Prudential and Shell, the ESN ran workshops, a mentoring programme and produced a guide for employers. Around the same time, STAMMA Defence launched, and a slew of new professional stammering networks followed suit in the BBC, NHS and more.

One of STAMMA's outdoor digital advertisements, with a man passing by A digital advert for our Find The Right Words campaign

Under STAMMA, we've launched a flurry of high profile campaigns. For one of these we successfully challenged Apple to stop it linking its Woozy Face emoji to stammering.

For our award-winning 2020 Find The Right Words campaign, we worked with Wikipedia to replace negative language around stammering on its platform. Adverts were displayed not only across the UK, but in the USA, Canada and Australia too. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said, "The project really speaks to the nature of Wikipedia, not just as a learning tool, but as an ever-evolving platform that needs to accurately reflect the world we live in". Read more about our Campaigns.

We bring people together. In the early days, there were barn dances and AGMs where members travelled across the country to meet others who stammer. In 1981, a cricket match was held between the AfS and a team of blind players to celebrate the 'International Year of the Disabled'.

An old photograph of a group of people standing outside a cricket pavilion Our team at the 1981 charity cricket match

The first National Conference took place in 1994 and has since become an important biennial event; an opportunity to make lifelong friends and showcase new thinking, research and discussions around stammering.

A group of people in a pub looking at the camera An evening at the 2018 Cardiff conference

We launched the world's first stammering webchat support service in 2020. This complements our volunteer-run helpline, providing specialist support to people who stammer, their friends and relatives five days a week. Through these, we're very proud to help over 30,000 people a year who come to us looking for information, reassurance and support.

Help us continue to do all this and more for the next 44 years. Happy birthday, STAMMA.