A COMMUNITY organisation supporting children with down syndrome, and their families, is celebrating being nominated for a national award.

Shine21, based in Dorchester, is up for a National Diversity Award with winners to be announced on Friday, September 16.

The organisation was founded in 2017 by Tara Gool and Liz Chilton. Tara said the pair were ‘overjoyed’ with the nomination.

She said: “We are really proud of the fact that somebody felt we deserved to be nominated - we’re thrilled that one of our members has given us that recognition.

“We do this because we’ve got children with down syndrome and we want our children to thrive and allow the parents to support one another and make connections.

“Me and Liz got to know each other when our girls were tennie tinny and it’s so important because these people get it and they become such a huge part of your life.”

Shine21 runs a buddy club designed to help children and young adults with down syndrome to create lasting friendships and partake in family-friendly activities.

Whilst the group is based in Dorchester, it supports families from across Dorset, Hampshire and Somerset.

Tara said: “We’ve been around for five years but we really have grown since January to the point where we’ve got around 170 members and we’d like to become a registered charity so we can access bigger funding and get involved with putting on more regular clubs for more people.”

“We’ve had a parent come all the way from Yeovil the other day for an activity because we want to be able to reach out to parents and children from all over - we want to be able to provide that support.”

The group runs regular activities for their members - as well as other children with SEN and their siblings, when space allows - but is looking to expand their offering. Tara said they’d love to be able to run a more regular variety of groups - including dance classes.

Shine21’s message ahead of the National Diversity Awards is quite simple - saying “we’re open to support everyone”.

Tara said: “It’s not just running activities, though, we’re here to help children create friendships and develop social skills - it gives them the opportunity to make lifelong friends and that’s why we started it.”

“It’s amazing. Me and Liz can be quite emotional wrecks when we have these big events and we see those friendships develop: it’s fantastic and it definitely does make us feel like we are doing something good.”