RU ACTIVITY
AWARENESS CAMPAIGN
SEE THE LIGHT" AWARENESS DAY
[15th DECEMBER 2023]
Have you ever wondered how the blind community lives and faces the world? Would you like to be more aware of this community?
Raffles University Student Representative Council (RU SRC) welcomed the NGO – Persatuan Kebajikan Berkat Berganda (PKBB) – to Raffles University Medini Campus to share their world with us and to provide the Raffles University’s Students an opportunity to understand the blind community. The aim of the event was to foster conversation and awareness of university students towards how the blind community experience the world meaningfully.
This event is a collaboration of University Malaya (UM) and Mahsa University Universiti Malaysia Terengganu (UMT) and led by Ms LOW See Mei, the programme director of Accountancy programmes at Raffles University.
The activities of the day was divided into two session
SESSION 1 – PHYSICAL ACTIVITIES
Student run activity booths that allow participants to learn something about how the blind community experience the world around us.
Goal: To create awareness about blind people on how they face their daily life challenges.
- Students were blind-folded and encouraged to only use their hearing faculty to ‘listen’ to a movie and experience cinema and storytelling from the perspective of a blind person.
- Students were blind-folded, with a guide beside them, so that they are able experience the experience of how a blind person navigate his/her environment by walking.
- Students were blindfolded and invited to taste various food to explore whether their sense of taste is heightened by not being able to see.
- Students were blind-folded and challenged to prepare a breakfast meal without being able to see to experience how the blind community go about with seemingly ordinary daily chores.
SESSION 2 – PHYSICAL & ONLINE SHARING SESSION
Physical + online sharing session with three visually impaired speakers as below:
- Mr. Moses Choo
- Ming Soon
- Boon Keat
The sharing session was moderated by Dr. Simon SOON (Universiti Malaya) and Dr. OOI Der Jiun (MAHSA University).
Collectively, the guest speakers represent two different generation sharing different experiences. Mr. Moses not only spoke passionately as an advocate for the blind community, he also shared a very inspiring life story of how he was able to carved out a professional career as a pioneer in the IT sector. In addition, one of the younger guest speakers, Ming Soon, was also a Universiti Malay graduate, as such he was able to share a little about his time studying at the university, which was a relatable experience to many of the audience members who are currently students of Raffles University.