World Diabetes Day is 14 November and with that in mind we have chosen Dominic Littlewood as our Inspirational Diversity Champion of the Month.

Dominic is a British journalist and television presenter who specialises in consumer protection. He is best known for his roles with BBC and 

Channel 5, presenting programmes such as Fake Britain, Cowboy Builders and Bad Builders: Bang to Rights.

Since 2016 he has presented Dom on the Spot on BBC On and he has appeared in other television shows including To Buy or Not to Buy, Holiday and The One Show.  In 2007 Dom took part in Strictly Come Dancing and in 2020 he appeared on Celebrity Masterchef.

He also writes for Top Gear Magazine and the Motoring Section of the Daily Telegraph and is an expert on used Nissan Qashqais and Jukes.

Dominic is diabetic, having been diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes as a child, he has lived with Type 1 Diabetes for 40 years and in that time has had as many as 20,000 hypos.  He is a supporter of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

To find out more about World Diabetes Day see here https://worlddiabetesday.org/

To find out more about the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation see here https://jdrf.org.uk/

World Alzheimer’s Month is the international campaign every September to raise awareness and challenge the stigma that surrounds dementia. The campaign was launched in 2012 and World Alzheimer’s Day is on 21 September each year.

With that in mind we have chosen Jim Broadbent as our Inspirational Diversity Champion of the Month.

Jim is an actor, graduating from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art in 1972.  He first came to prominence in television comedy in shows such as Only Fools and Horses and Time Bandits with his breakthrough role coming in Mike Leigh’s Life is Sweet.  His notable roles since then include Bridget Jones’ Diary, Hot Fuzz, The Iron Lady, Game of Thrones to name just a few.  He has played Horace Slughorn in the Harry Potter film series and Samuel Gruber in the amazing Paddington films.

He has received many awards including an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in Iris, a BAFTA for Moulin Rouge and Longford and an Emmy for The Gathering Storm.

He was awarded an OBE in 2002 but declined stating that there were more deserving recipients than actors and that the British Empire was not something he wanted to “celebrate”.

Jim is an Ambassador for Dementia UK and in 2018 presented a BBC Lifeline Appeal, in which he spoke movingly about his own mother’s experience of dementia, as well as highlighting the life-changing support that the Dementia UK specialist nurses are able to offer families facing dementia – in communities, GP practices, hospitals, care homes and hospices, and on the Admiral Nurse Dementia Helpline.

To find out more about Alzheimers’ Month see here https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/get-involved/world-alzheimers-month

To find out more about Dementia UK see here https://www.dementiauk.org/

To find out more about Jim see here https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000980/bio  

Disability Awareness Day is on 17 July and with that in mind we have chosen Francesca Martinez as our Inspirational Diversity Champion of the month.

Francesca is a comedian and disability campaigner.  As a comedian, she has toured internationally, including sell-out runs at the Edinburgh Festival, the Melbourne Comedy Festival and the Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal.

As a campaigner, she spent a year getting the 100,000 signatures required to trigger a debate in Parliament on welfare reform and its effect on disabled people. Using her award-winning humour, Francesca, who has cerebral palsy, talks passionately about facing fear, the profound power of positive thinking, gaining the right perspective and questioning society’s values in her critically acclaimed memoir, What the **** is Normal?!, which was nominated for The Bread and Roses Radical Publishing Award.

As a youngster she was a regular in the BBC children’s drama Grange Hill, becoming one of the first disabled actors to have a significant role on a popular TV programme. In November 2016, she was the guest curator at Sheffield’s Off The Shelf Festival of Words, which featured a day of inspirational talks and events. She also teamed up with Network Rail to launch a new campaign to improve disabled passengers’ experiences of travelling by rail. Another recent highlight for was supporting Frankie Boyle on tour.

For International Women’s Day Able Magazine published their top 10 most influential women with a disability which included Francesca.  She is patron of a number of charity including the Misfits Theatre Company.

To find out more about Francesca see here https://www.francescamartinez.com/bio

To find out more about Disability Awareness Day see here

https://www.disabilityawarenessday.org.uk/show/

This year Diabetes Week runs from 13 – 19 June and with this in mind we have chosen Muhammad Ali as our Inspirational Diversity Champion of the Month.

Muhammad is a professional boxer and on 19 May 2018 he made boxing history after becoming World’s first type1 diabetic to be granted a professional licence by the British Boxing Board of Control.

As an amateur Muhammad boxed at the 2016 Olympics, 2015 World Championships and the 2014 World Youth Championships where he won a silver medal.  His ambition is to become the first diabetic boxing world champion.

Muhammad says this about his diabetes:

“Diabetes is a condition, not an illness; I’m just like any other ordinary person. Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass by but learning to weather the storm. One day I’d love to say I lived by diabetes”.

Muhammad is an ambassador for Diabetes UK, Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and the International Diabetes Federation.

To find out more about Muhammad see here https://www.muhammadaliboxing.com/

To find out more about Diabetes Week see here https://www.diabetes.org.uk/diabetes-week

11 – 16 April is Parkinson’s Awareness Week and with this in mind we have chosen Paul Mayhew-Archer as our Inspirational Diversity Champion of the Month.

Following a brief career in teaching, during which he organised a school trip and got left behind, Paul Mayhew-Archer has spent the last 40 years trying to make people laugh. 

He is a multi-award-winning writer whose credits include ‘The Vicar of Dibley’, “Mrs Brown’s Boys” and the screen version of “Roald Dahl’s Esio Trot” starring Judi Dench and Dustin Hoffman. He also produced the much loved Radio 4 shows ‘I’m Sorry I haven’t A Clue’ and ‘Old Harry’s Game’, and as a script editor he has worked on everything from ‘Spitting Image’ to ‘Miranda’.  

In 2011 he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, an incurable illness that gets progressively worse and has over 50 symptoms. It is also – as Paul quickly found out – funny.   

Since then he’s had some of the best times of his life.   

In 2016 he made his first documentary, “Parkinson’s: The funny Side”, for which he won the Grierson Award for Best Documentary Presenter.

In 2018 he took part in his first podcast, sitting next to The Archbishop of Canterbury and performed his first ever One Man show, “Incurable Optimist”, at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

He now promotes the therapeutic power of laughter as a stand-up comedian, and is an active member of the Parkinson’s UK Oxford Branch.
To find out more about Parkinson’s Awareness Week see here https://parkinsonscare.org.uk/awarenessweek/

To find out more about Paul see here http://mayhew-archer.com/

On 3 March it is World Hearing Day and with that in mind we have chosen Chris Fonseca as our Inspirational Diversity Champion of the Month.

Chris is a professional dancer, choreographer, teacher and deaf ambassador. He specialises in Urban dance technique and works extensively across the UK and overseas – receiving both international invitations and commissions.

Chris drew early inspiration from the actor Michael ‘Boogaloo Shrimp’ Chambers and Old Skool dance techniques such as Electric Boogaloo, Popping, locking and B-Boying. Whilst attaining his degree in Graphic Communication, Chris was a founding member of Def Motion, an all-deaf dance group affiliated to Deaffest – the UK’s annual Deaf Film Festival.

Since then Chris has been involved in a variety of endeavours. In 2012, Chris appeared in the London Paralympics opening ceremony showcasing his talents as an accomplished dance artist and creator.

Other achievements have included – The Black Collective: Black History Month, Smirnoff’s Keep it Moving campaign, LinkedIn’s Chase the Great campaign, SKY1’s what’s up TV, BBC’s the One Show, BBC Three’s Amazing Human JBL: Sound to See campaign, BBC’s The Greatest Dancer, Blue Peter and touring the UK with the Wind in The Willows musical.

To find out more about Chris see here

https://www.chrisfonsecadancer.com/home

To find out more about World Hearing Day see herehttps://www.who.int/campaigns/world-hearing-day/2022