Gorilla Logo

pp4danBarnet's Logo and Mascot is Dan the Gorilla, Dan being an acronym for Disabilities and additional needs. The decision to use Dan was agreed by all at our first 2 meetings in March 2009 when a soft toy gorilla was used as an 'ice breaker' story.

A member of the meetings told how they attended the Launch of the Early Years Support Service and a Health Visitor Speaker referred to knowing how parent-carers could be thought of as *guerillas and had to fight for everything. Our member mistook this for gorillas and at first thought how rude to refer to parent-carers as gorillas.

Quickly realising her mistake she then began to think that a gorilla was quite suitable to describe the behaviour of a parent-carer. Anyone who has seen the David Attenborough programme 'Life on Earth' will have seen how gentle and family orientated gorillas are, but when threatened they will fight to the death to protect their families. Many parent-carers will do everything they can to protect their child with a disability and additional needs, working tirelessly to keep their family together trying to please all, and fighting to get the right services for their children!

On hearing this story it was suggested that the gorilla be adopted as the organisation's Mascot and everyone present agreed!

*Guerilla - a member of a small independent, sometimes politicaly motivated group making surprise attacks - Chambers Concise Dictionary