Reflections for 2nd April

2nd April 2016

  This is an important day for us, our project, and most importantly, the handicapped people participating in this Wheel, Walk or Jog event. Planning for this started weeks before this, not only did we helped to pack goodie bags, but also set up two stalls and recruited about 70 volunteers from 5 different schools for it. Being the organizing team, we arrived at OCBC Square early in the morning to set up the stalls. Soon the volunteers came and the event began. The first batch of volunteers went through a wheel chair training session by HWA, where they learnt the basics and things to take note while pushing a wheel chair. After lunch, the handicapped people came in buses. The volunteers rushed to welcome them, then each of them is paired with a handicapped person. Then the volunteers pushed the handicapped people around the carnival, interacting and played games with them.
  In this event, I was personally in charged of the volunteers, organizing them and pairing them. Most of these secondary 1 boys were more outgoing than I thought, they managed to strike a conversation immediately meeting their buddy, interacting with them and having fun with them. Although I didn't interact with many of the handicapped people, but I have seen their faces as they smiled while interacting with the volunteers. They truly enjoyed themselves. From this, I can tell that many of these handicapped people actually lack interaction and actually have a lot to say. From a feedback of a volunteer, it was said that his buddy and him talked about a lot things throughout the event, such as dialects, education system etc. Being in charge of the volunteers, I worked with the organizers. One of these organizer is a wheel chair bound handicapped person. However, what I have see in him was that he was a very independent and strong person, he was in charged of many of the things. This shows that people are not bound by their disabilities. This changed my perception of handicapped people being weak. Lastly, through this event, we have gained experience on organizing such a big event and handling that many volunteers. This also give us our aim in what we want to do for this project, and for HWA. We want the handicapped people to be more integrated into the society.