Proud Scotland 2023: Steven Grant from Ardrossan up for award

Steven Grant is up for their Professional Services Award for the amazing work he does for the charity as a transgendered and registered blind person.

He told the Herald: "Winning the ‘Professional Services Award’ at the Open Scotland Awards 2023 would not only be a great recognition for me personally but also a fantastic achievement for the transgender community as a whole.

"My fingers are crossed."

Alan Bell, founder of the Scottish Centre for Personal Safety, said: "Steven was born a female and with a visual impairment.

"He has aniridia - an eye disorder which saw his vision reduce as he got older until, eventually, he was almost completely blind.

"Because of his disability, he was targeted by bullies at school – in fact, vision impaired people are more than twice as likely to be attacked as sighted people, probably because they cannot identify the attacker.

"Over the years, Steven has had stones thrown at his house which resulted in broken windows. This forced his family to move house twice.

"He has had guide dogs attacked, including having stones thrown at his one dog while it was working; and his dad, who is also registered blind, has had an airgun shot at his working dog as well."

By 2017, Steven was terrified to go out and about by himself. That’s when he heard that The Scottish Centre for Personal Safety was running empowering Personal Safety classes for blind people in their Barony St John Centre in Ardrossan, which was near where he lived in Irvine.

Very soon after going along to the weekly classes, he began to see his confidence grow – so much so that, after the classes finished, he decided he would try to become an instructor and help other blind people become as confident as he now felt.

It took him three attempts to pass his instructor’s exam but in 2018, he had enough confidence to stand in front of a class and teach the law regarding self defence, answer questions on the law, and teach a variety of self defence techniques for both blind and sighted participants.

By passing his exam, he became one of only three blind, qualified personal safety/self defence instructors registered in the UK.

Alan said: "In 2020, he realised that a lot of the feelings he was experiencing was because he was born the wrong gender, and so he began transitioning into a male and changed his name to Steven.

"Unbeknownst to him, this now made him the UK's first transgender qualified personal safety/self defence instructor – a fact that he is extremely proud of."

According to Alan, Steven's transition hasn't come without its personal struggles - he says Steven's mum won't call him by his name and won't allow anyone else to do so inside her home. 

"His father, however, is accepting of his transition," Alan said, "so that is a comfort.

"And the local community has also been very accepting of him so, luckily, he hasn't experienced the verbal or physical abuse that many transgender people have faced."

Steven now teaches a variety of personal safety courses for the charity including courses aimed at young people, women, those who are sensory-impaired, people who have learning disabilities, and those who are LGBTQI+.

He has helped more than 2,000 vulnerable people since qualifying as an instructor.

Steven feels the most satisfying courses he teaches is for schoolchildren where he has been told that he is “a role model and inspiration” to many of them and he knows he is helping young people struggling with their gender or sexual orientation to accept and be proud of how they feel.

The head teacher at Auchenharvie Academy commented that pupils have "applauded the diversity of the instructors" in the courses he has helped present.

Alan said: "Various LGBTQI+ members of the groups we train have commented on not only how professional our presentations are but also that having blind and particularly a transgender instructor is “inspirational”.

"We have run courses for Open Ayrshire LGBT Youth, Scottish Transgender (Glasgow and Edinburgh), Glasgow Transgender Support Programme, Trans Masculine Scotland, Edinburgh LGBT and Edinburgh University’s LGBT+ Society.

"An analysis of participants of these courses showed some great results; 98% said they felt their self-confidence had been improved.

"But when we isolated the feedback from transgender participants, the results were phenomenal; 100 per cent of transgender participants said they felt their self-confidence had been dramatically improved.

"Ninety-eight per cent felt their self-esteem had been improved and 98 per cent felt a reduction in anxiety levels due to feeling less afraid of violent attacks."

Steven's work with the Scottish Centre for Personal Safety has helped the charity win various awards including The National Diversity Awards in 2020, The Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service (the MBE for voluntary organisations) in 2020 and The Herald Diversity Awards in 2021.