September 2006

As well as all the usual groups, I set up a sewing class for the women in partnership with WEA and Keighley Healthy Living Network. The reason for this class was to give some practical skills to the women fro their future benefit.

We at The Sangat Centre have started a new project, which is based on encouraging the community to invest in a private pension scheme. The launch of this project started this month when we invited a host of organisations. All of the people who attended were given a brief introduction on what we aim to achieve from this project, which is to ensure that we can bring more awareness to the community about the benefits of saving for their future and how to invest.

I organised a speaker from Airedale PCT to give some information about Thalassaemia to Sangat's staff, as we have stated the second module of the University class we run, in partnership with Bradford University.

Thalassemia is an inherited blood disorder that causes mild or severe anaemia (ah-NEE-me-uh). The anaemia is due to reduced haemoglobin (HEE-muh-glow-bin) and fewer red blood cells than normal. Haemoglobin is the protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen to all parts of the body.
In people with thalassaemia, the genes that code for haemoglobin are missing or variant (different than the normal genes). Severe forms of thalassemia are usually diagnosed in early childhood and are lifelong conditions.
The two main types of thalassemia, alpha and beta, are named for the two protein chains that make up normal hemoglobin. The genes for each type of thalassemia are passed from parents to their children. Alpha and beta thalassemias have both mild and severe forms.