Written by Nichamon Pan-Anuruk, BBA#26
It has been months over months, going through various project possibilities and preparing for the biggest project ever since BBA GO club is established, which is the “I am able” project. The spark of the project idea comes from the inspiration TEDx (“Dis+able”) has given to one of our crew, a participant in the event, who later inspires all of us. We realize that there are many things in daily lives that are unprepared for disabled people. On the other hand, there are also something that they can do, not any less than the rest of us, that we all do not know about. We want this event to be a bridge that connect our understanding to people with disabilities and be the first step in creating something to help them.
Choosing the activities and planning how the final event should turn out is one of the hardest parts. With only 12 people within the club organizing team, there are a lot of concerns raised and challenges we have to go through. However, the final result turns to be worthwhile.
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The final event is hosted on 15 June 2019 with maximum of 40 participants. It is divided into three main parts, experiencing, understanding and generating ideas. On the first stage, “Experiencing” session, the participants would get a glimpse of short-term disability in the group-based simulation. Second stage, “understanding” is when the participants and TU students with some disabilities would know and understand one another as an individual through self-reflection. On the last session, “Generating idea”, grouped participants would analyze problems their friends have to face and pitch their final solutions. After this event, we will deliberately select the solutions based on most-voted and ability-to-implement and create the next project where we will make this idea tangible.
Along the event, we have learnt a lot of things. We have understood ourselves and other people more. In addition, we are amazed by practical idea that each group of participants offers to us. We are happy to see participants and disabled friends spoke out their thoughts and their personal value. Gradually, they have started to “understand” each other in the new view that they have not thought about before.
Personally, I would like to extend a big thank you to all BBA GO team members for trying hard days after days in making this event as good as it can get, to Aj. Proadpran (P’Jobjab) for being our best invited speaker and project advisor that always guides us with best comments, to all group buddies for being a great help in turning the final day wonderful, to students and P’Poom from DSS for volunteering to come and share new perspectives with us, to BBA Thammasat for facilitating and supporting our club, to Ministry of Social Development and Human Security for showing interest in student projects. And lastly, I sincerely thank you all participants of this event who have also inspired us with their powerful determination and thoughtful ideas.
We strongly believe “a small ripple will finally create a big impact”. We have been inspired, we will continue to send out this inspiration and we hope many or a few people will also be inspired by our events.
Posted on July 18, 2019 |
