Special and meaningful virtual Hari Raya celebration

By Nisha Ganasen

End of the event participants and instructors saying goodbye to each other

(Source: Personal Archive)

KUALA LUMPUR: Taylor’s Leo Club conducted ‘Raya Bersama-sama’, a heart-warming virtual Hari Raya Aidilfitri celebration with members of the deaf and blind community on 8 May.

The Club is a non-profit organisation of volunteers that has been helping in communities that are in need and physically challenged for the past three years.

The MCO restrictions did not stop them from celebrating the spirit of the festival with the deaf and blind children.

They collaborated with Istika Jaya Childcare Centre to conduct a virtual service event for this year's Hari Raya.

The event provided participants a wonderful opportunity to feel how it would be to celebrate a festival with those who are disabled.

Through the event they want the children to feel involved, be heard and seen in the society, explained Lim Sze Jean, President of Taylor’s Leo Club.

The organisation had been planning and preparing the event’s activities for one month.

They invited the blind and deaf Childcare Centre instructors Adeline Goh, Anita Krishna, Wang Chai Xin, Nurul Husna Ibrahim and Helen Low to teach sign language to the participants.

Leo Club has done such an event for the third time now.

“We learned sign language with Istika Jaya instructors before the actual event day, so that it would be easy for us to communicate with participants during the activities,” said Chong Yuet Yin, the event’s organising chairperson.

The event started with KAHOOT play to learn more about Hari Raya.

Then, in the main activity participants got to learn some basic sign language to produce a sign language Hari Raya video song and dedicate the video to the deaf and blind community. At the end of the event everyone made ketupat from a ketupat template provided and wrote their wishes for the children in the centre, which had been placed at the end of the sign language video song.

“It was an amazing event; I personally wanted to learn sign language so this was super exciting to be part of this amazing event,” said Ramisha Adil, one of the participants.

Kindness is the language that deaf can hear and blind can see.

“Showing love to them is our responsibility as a human towards another human”, stated John Lee Yue Han, Organizing Secretary and host of the event.

To watch the full video song, head over to their Instagram page. For future events you can follow their official website; Facebook page.