By Amirah Sukurdin, YES 2010-2011, Malaysia
On April 17, Benny Tim (YES’08), Tay Jia Hui (YES ’12), Amirah Sukurdin (YES ’11) and Priscilla Abel (YES ’14) were invited to give a talk during the Project X Camp: Unleash the Spark Within You, which was organized by Kolej Kediaman 12, University Malaya. Since the Malaysia YES Program sends hearing impaired students to go on the program, most of our alumni know basic sign language, and we thought this would be a great opportunity to teach other students as well.
Project X aims to inspire students to reach their maximum potential (hence Unleash the Spark Within You), and encourage and enlighten the importance of English usage to high school students.
We started the day by introducing ourselves to the 30 students from SMK Mahang, Kedah. We explained that we are returnees of the YES Program, and gave a brief history of the program, as well as what we do as alumni of the YES Program. We also explained what AFS Yayasan Antarabudaya Malaysia is all about and promoted the exchange programs and scholarship opportunities of these programs.
Benny, a deaf YES alumnus, took charge of the whole workshop. He played a slideshow with pictures of basic signs for words like time, day, month, transport and family. After the introduction, we divided the students into 6 groups and asked them to make a few sentences using the signs they learned. Then, they presented and the other groups had to guess what they were signing.
This sign language workshop was a small step in our initiative to bridge the gap between the deaf community and the hearing community. If each Malaysian knows basic sign language, it will be a lot easier to communicate with hearing impaired people and daily life will be better.
#AlumniReact #bridgingthegap
