Colin Antink received a Civic Award in 2016 for his regular column in the newspaper, Healthwatch which raises money for the Thames Hospice. His Nomination follows:-
Colin was born with a rare genetic condition called
Sticklers syndrome, which affects the sight, hearing and joints. He is registered blind. Despite these limitations, he has always been determined to try to make life for Wokingham residents a little more comfortable, mainly because he has first hand
experience of the difficulties some people face.
Colin is loathe to use the term ‘disabled’, as he says to disable something is to switch it off, terminate the existence. He prefers to use ‘differently abled’!
He began to write his column for the Wokingham and Bracknell newspapers when he was approached by an editor at the pride of Bracknell awards when he received an award for caring for his mother, Lynne,who also has the condition. He was just twelve years old at the time. He worked as a volunteer at the Thames Hospice shop in town for three years, until ill health forced him to give up.
Reluctant to give up helping in some way for the charity, he came up with the idea of having a tattoo of the Thames hospice logo on his arm. He raised f850.00 for this. As Colin says, no pain no gain ! His Mother winced more than he did !
Colin then came up with various other ways to raise cash for the charity, which included a photo-shoot and a stall in the Christmas market selling retro art goods he had made himself. Although he has to hold the soldering iron just inches from his face, he wasn’t going to let a little thing like that stop him! He also raised cash to have a CCTV system fitted to the Hospice shop.
People in the town all became used to being able to
approach him in the street with any problems they had involving accessibility in the town. He became the
young schoolboy who wrote a lively column to the
young man who would fight the corner of the
differently abled in any way he can.
Colin’s condition is progressive, can only become worse, but there is no way he is going to allow a body which, in his own words, has a few ‘design faults’ stop him !
He is a strong character, and knows from painful experience the difficulties that are faced by people in similar health, and will strive in any way he can to put forward ideas to improve life for these people of Wokingham town.
Because he knows what it’s like to hurt.
Wokingham Town Museum Unique Identifier: WTH0557