The Giving Hands

The following few posts would be on my personal experiences with people with disabilities. And I would like to begin with sharing a true story of my maternal aunt — some of you may have heard about this during the LIVE radio interview about 7 hours ago :)

My youngest maternal aunt was born a normal child. But she developed a very high fever when she was a couple of years old and the fever kind of rendered her both legs paralyzed. I am not exactly sure whether both her legs were paralyzed or whether she had slowly lost the ability to use her legs due to the lack of exercise.

My aunt moves around sitting on the floor. I remember when we were small, my Mum used to buy her walking sticks and a couple of those “equipments” that she could hold on to and try to walk on her own, but she refused to use them.

My maternal grandmother has been taking care of my aunt eversince the incident. My other aunts have also tried convincing my grandmother to send my disabled aunt to one of those “Pusat Kebajikan Masyarakat” (Social Welfare Department) in Kuantan but my grandmother refused.

So what will happen to my disabled aunt once my grandmother passes on..? Nobody will know..

But with service centres like Eden, the future of the disabled persons will be in good hands. They will be taught to take care of themselves. They will be taught to appreciate the environment by recycling. They will be taught to do simple housechores. And they will be taught to undertake simple tasks and they will eventually be able to get a job. Now, isn’t a life like this more meaningful?

Come on, make that pledge now. You can make a difference, so why don’t you?

Note: I posted about this in last year’s Blogathon too.