Educating young blind children for a better future

This cute little girl is four year old Maira from Kedah. She is the youngest child among her six siblings. Her father is a factory worker while her mother is a full-time housewife. Maira loves to play with colorful objects because she is able to perceive colors, but unfortunately she was born with bilateral eye corneal opacity in both eyes which lead to scarring and clouding of her cornea that reduces her visions significantly. Even though she is low vision, she still has a bit of light perception. Imagine being inside cloudy water at night with a little light that is very dim, that is how she sees. Regrettably, she will never be able to perceive the complete shape of an object.

Maira joined St Nicholas’ Home Early Intervention Programme in 2015, when she was just a year old. Initially, she was very shy and highly dependent on her mother. She answers only to her mum and was not very responsive during activity time with the teachers. In gross motor skills, Maira was unable to walk without the assistance of a stroller. She also could only focus on one task at a time. For instance, she was not able to count while holding something else such as a ball in her hands.

Over the last year or so, Maira has shown much improvement especially in her gross motor and social skills. She is now more engaged in activities with her teachers. Not only that, she is also more comfortable and sociable with the people around her. With this early intervention program, we believe that she would become more responsive to instructions and learn self management. We look forward to the day when Maira grows up to be a happy and independent girl.

The month of November is here in-conjunction with 2016 Giving Tuesday campaign!

It is also Hii’s birthday as he just celebrated his 5th birthday on the 01st of November and is progressing tremendously well in our home’s Early Intervention Programme.For the year 2016, there are two main goals set for Hii. Firstly, to interact and play with other children and secondly is to increase his mobility outdoors with minimal supervision.

Hii not only has improved his understanding of commands to perform tasks but has also developed his ability to understand and converse well in English. Hii enjoys using his tablet most of the time and our trainers are now working on accelerating his interaction with family members.

Besides that, to increase his level of Malay communication skills, we are also encouraging him to listen to Malay nursery rhymes and songs to familiarize with the language as it’s the national language and it’s vital for his communication in future. Conversing with Hii in multiple languages will also boost his brain cognitive functions.

This year, Hii’s motor skills have also improved greatly as he is now able to move around the house without help and is working on outdoor mobility with minimal supervision. He enjoys the sessions we have at the toy library and enjoys the outdoors, however his time outdoors are usually reduced because of his medical condition. Hii is also very good at his sessions in the toy library working on puzzles, patterns and sequencing games.

In exactly two more years, Hii will graduate from our programme. Our goal is to ensure that Hii will be able to move around and explore outdoors with minimum supervision and increase his interaction with children of his own age. We hope that our work with him will help him adapt when he is enrolled in a special school.

Your help will go a long way in ensuring the sustainability of the Early Intervention Programme and for our team to reach out to special children like Hii.