You're listening to a Community Story from Be My Eyes.

My name is Charley. I am from South Wales in the UK. I am 33. My partner and I have been together for almost nine years now, and we live together in Cardiff with his son. We have two cats and a tortoise, and fingers crossed one day a dog. Family is really important to us. My sister lives about five minutes away. My parents live outside the city but we talk all the time and we visit when we can. It is actually my close family bonds that brought an understanding of blindness into my life. So, I wanted to tell you about Peter. Peter is my step granpa. He married my Nan years before I was born, and he has always been family. He taught me how to play certain card games like solitaire, and different types of solitaire to keep me busy, and he played scrabble with me.

He played games with my sister. My sister and I used to spend a lot of time with my Nan and with Peter, and sometimes we would go to Roath Park in Cardiff, have a walk around the lake, play on the playground, have an icecream, and feed the birds. It has never been a question in my mind that Peter is our family - blood relative or not. As he got older, his vision got worse to the point, where he became legally blind. He can make out some shapes and some colors, but it's hard for him to recognize people. Obviously, it's very uncomfortable for him to be anywhere where he doesn't know the layout, where he's never been before. My Nan passed away a few years ago, and I worry about him being on his own, particularly because he's also hard of hearing. He has told me about a lot of times, when he's been waiting to cross the road for example, and people have just walked past him and crossed themselves without even checking to see if he needs any help.

Conversely, he also told me once about a time he was waiting to cross an extremely busy road near his house, and he became aware of someone running towards him very quickly across the road. It turned out to be a teenager, who had seen him and wanted to make sure he was okay. I was disappointed by some of the stories he told me sometimes, but that particular one really sort of struck a chord with me. It was heartening to know that there are people who still recognize that they can help, and I wanted to be like that kid. He bolted across a dual carriageway in a break in traffic to make sure somebody else was OK. I tried to see if maybe I could volunteer somewhere, but with my working hours it would have been almost impossible for me to commit to something like that.

I donate to certain charities, but I wanted to do more than that. I wanted to make a real impact on the community and get involved. And then I found out about Be My Eyes in a discussion on a Facebook group. I signed straight up, the app is super straight forward. You can actually carry out practice calls to get used to how the calls come through and how to answer them. My first ever call was a gentleman who was celebrating his birthday that day. He asked if I could read his birthday cards to him, because he and his wife were both visually impaired. I described the cards to him and read the messages. He asked where I was from, and it turned out that he was literally only a few miles away from me. I recommended my favorite restaurant to him for his birthday, because he was telling me about a restaurant he had just been to to celebrate.

I said, for your next birthday, you should go to this one, it's really good. We ended up having a really nice chat, before I wished him many happy returns, and we both went back to our days. I felt this real sense of happiness, of achievement. I haven't cured an illness or saved a life, but maybe for a couple of minutes, I got to brighten up somebody's special day a little bit. We are all really busy and we're all wrapped up in our own lives, but this is just one of the easiest ways I've ever seen to give back. There's no regular commitment, if a call comes through and it's a bad time, you can let it go to the next volunteer. There are lots of volunteers, and you don't have to beat yourself up about that. I got two friends to sign up earlier this year and I feel really good about that and really good about being able to make this positive impact, however small it might seem on the world around me. I really, really recommend joining.

Thank you for listening to this Community Story from Be My Eyes. You can share your story too, send it to mystory@bemyeyes.com. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel, download our app, or visit www.bemyeyes.com/community-stories for more.