How did Beyond Empower come to be? Idea’s Alliance blog with Ben Andrews

Ben Andrews is on a mission to make communities and leisure services accessible and inclusive. He wants to enable everyone to have the opportunity to live an active and involved lifestyle, following their own interests and pursuits to support physical and mental health. Living with a degenerative visual impairment since birth, Ben frequently encountered the inaccessibility of many mainstream spaces. He has used this experience and his expertise in exercise and health sciences to create Beyond Empower – a Community Interest Company that supports disabled people to do the things they want to do by transforming community services and mainstream leisure provision. What we particularly like about Beyond Empower is the way that their services start off with a person-centred focus, but the adaptations and accessibility adjustments made to mainstream services have a longer-lasting and wider-reaching community benefit. The idea’s alliance hands over to Ben to tell us more…