Our Best Buddies Day

14th of November 2009 was another historical day for UCSI U-College Buddies and our buddies as it was our first ever Best Buddies Day, which happened from 1.00pm to 4.00pm at Lounge of our UCSI University main campus.

Thanks to the supports among ourselves, the new members of UCSI U Best Buddies and also our dearest best buddies and parents, we’d twenty joined us for this special occasion. The main purpose of having this event is to train ourselves as well as the public on how to interact and socialize with people with intellectual disabilities. Apart from this, it also aims to strengthen the bond between college buddies and buddies.

The planning started three weeks with all the games tidily plotted before this day but the real preparation actually started early in the morning. Some of the college buddies gathered at one of the members’ house to prepare for refreshment with food such as tuna sandwiches and chicken balls while the rest went for the set up at the venue.

At about1 pm, the training started officially by Ms Yeong Moh Foong, who’s an experienced one from the United Voice. At the beginning, she introduced the different categories of learning disabilities. A few role plays were held to make the talk more interesting. The first role play was about ways of expressing to someone with learning disability and she used directions-giving as her example to make us clear about the proper way of guiding our buddies. She also emphasized on a few aspects to be noted when communicating with or instructing a buddy. “For instance, we need to speak slowly and softly so that the buddy can understand our point,” she pointed out.

Besides that, we need to minimize the usage of difficult words and try to use our languages as simple as possible to clarify our words. The second role-play was more appealing and it was about the importance of the art of listening. Listening can make buddies or even ourselves, as the speakers, feel appreciated.

As for the closing of the training, the United Voice speaker presented certificates to the College Buddy Director. Refreshments lasted only for 5 minutes due to a dearth of time but it was indeed meaningful as it had provided a chance for the college buddies to build up good rapport with the buddies or even their parents.

Soon after this, we adjourned to the lobby of Block A for our major game today, which was given a name: Ha-ku-na-ma-ta-ta, which means “there are no worries”. Like what’s implied in this game, we really had an enjoyable time with all our worries gone when doing this together. The buddies and college buddies were divided into four groups with each receiving a pile of newspapers, a pair of scissors, a tube of glue, cellophane tape and a pair of staplers. Each group was required to select a theme for their runway project prior to dress their chosen member up as the ‘model of the theme’ in 30 minutes. All the buddies endeavored to show their artistic creativity for modeling and had finally came out with their impressive masterpieces, i.e. The Lion King, Hawaii, Halloween and The Witch and the Broomstick. The Lion King won the first for this fashion show but all groups were given presents for encouragement.

To keep this day forever in our memory so that it won’t fade off, we took some photographs with buddies, parents and among ourselves. Altogether we look forward to such gathering in the future.

Reported by,
Syariza Kamal