We made it!

12/12/12, a beautiful date, and finally we had done with our Health Promotion Project!

The project started with many unexpected problems.

First of all, i applied the bus to fetch us at faculty at 6.30am but the officer said because it's 'bus sewa', so we need to wait until 7am. All of us had gathered at faculty at 7.20am but the bus still didn't come and we don't have the bus driver's handphone number because he's from outside. So we had to call the officer and he told me the bus will only come at 7.30am. We waited until 7.45am but the bus still didn't turn up. Everyone was nervous because we worried that we couldn't reach there on time. Finally, the bus came at 7.50am.

We thought everything going to be fine but the bus stopped halfway. It really freak me out because we were rushing out of time! Thank God the bus able to be started again and ran smoothly. Along the way to Rawang, the bus stopped for few times and we even can smelled bad odour in the bus. Like plastic being burnt. And we even lost in Rawang because we couldn't find the way to the school. And the time shown is almost 9am! we were late for 1 hour plus! So we decided to carry out backup plan which is cancelled all the speeches and straight into the talk.

When we reached the school, it's already 9am plus plus. We felt embarrassing because we were the organizer! And the things shocked me the most was the meeting room. I never thought it could be that small and crowded. It was so difficult for us to move in the meeting room. And i also never thought that there will be so many children attending the talk. I can see that some of the parents couldn't concentrate on the talk because they were being distracted by their children.

A super active children caught my attention so i decided to go and calm him down so that his parents could concentrate on the talk. Things are never as smooth as i thought. The boy is super naughty and active and he never listen to me! It was so frustrating to deal with him. I tried so many ways to calm him down, to catch his attention but all were failed. I felt so discouraged! After some time, i thought of giving him a piece of blank paper and asked him to draw something on the paper. It worked! The little boys became so concentrate in drawing and he able to sit there for more than 10 minutes. I being told by the boy's father that he likes to draw and write at home. So this experience made me a little bit more understand about children. We need to find something that they fancy to catch their attention.

Then, i got chance to talk to a mother to a cerebral palsy children. She told me her daughter being treated by occupational therapy but it stopped now because of the transportation problem. The nearest hospitals that provide occupational therapy service are Selayang and Sungai Buloh. It's actually quite a distance from Rawang. So she has no choice to stop the therapy because of the transportation problem. I interviewed and asked her whether her daughter has some improvement after received occupational therapy and she answered me YES! it was actually a very encouraging answer. And she said the therapy need to be continuous so that the improvement will be more visible. So it was kinda sad that her daughter had stopped the treatment for about 1 year. We actually prepared list of Rehabilitation for Children with Special Needs in Rawang area so i hope it can help the parents with transportation problem.

The talk that given by Puan Mahfuzah was actually good and informative and role of occupational therapist was clearly explained but i think it was too long and some of the parents/teachers had lost their interest and concentration and started to feel sleepy. And some of the terms used by Puan Mahfuzah is in English so i think some of the parents might get confused about the meaning of the words. And the meeting room really not an ideal place to held the talk because when Puan Mahfuzah was demo in front of the room, the parents/teachers at the back not able to see what she was doing at the front there.

While proceed to support group, some of us were assigned to bring the kids to outside so that the parents can concentrate on it. Maybe we were lacking of communication, some of our group members were assigned to bring the children to outside including me. After that i felt it was kinda strange, why not the volunteers bring them out while our own group members stayed in? Why were the volunteers stayed in while it was our group project? In order not to miss the section, i decided to change with the volunteer so that i can stay and to see how the support group worked.

But the support group was actually quite helpful for the parents and teachers. I can saw that there are some parents very supportive and able to voice out their thoughts and opinion. While others able to give their feedback and motivation to the parents that need help. So i hope that social group can continue to carry on so that the parents and teachers can gained some opinion/feedback/motivation from there.

From the questionnaires that we collected back, we can see that many of the parents were not exposed to occupational therapy. So from carrying out this project, i think most of them now are more familiar with what occupational therapy is and how we can help their children with special needs. And some of the parents even proposed to make this project as annual project. It's very motivating to see this kind of comment!

There are so many unexpected problems occurred but thank God we managed to overcome them. Thank you every group members who had sacrificed their time/energy to carry out this project and thanks to the lovely coursemates because they were willing to be volunteers for our project. Without them, i think our project can't be carried out successfully because there were so many kids to handle! Thanks to Puan Mahfuzah willing to be our speaker and share her experiences and knowledge to the audiences! Thanks to Dr Saz willing to come to supervise our projects and gave us so many useful advice and help. Thanks to all the teachers and parents who willing to come and support the project. Without them, there were be meaningless to carry out the project. THANK YOU EVERYONE!