a. A two-sentence summary of the project goals.

This project aimed to nurture interest of planting in the autistic students in order to help build their motor and social skills that will help in promoting their sensory integration. In addition, this program aimed to create awareness on autism as well provide long-lasting impacts to the autistic children, their parents, the REACH Center, and the environment.

b. Did other fund-raising efforts contribute to your projects? What were they?

Yes, a fund-raising activity was carried out by selling fresh-baked buns with different fillings and homemade potato chips while creating awareness on autism at the same time. The team members also contributed their own pocket money for the project.

c. Provide details about how your project actually worked.

Before & During

We started off with building the plantation base followed by the plantation activity itself where we included the autistic children with a hands-on experience with planting. Throughout the plantation activities, the students were closely guided by our team members as well as the teachers from REACH. The children managed to experience a very detailed plantation process as they were very much involved in most of the plantation process right from seeding until harvesting.

In between the activities, we did variety of other activities with the children such as painting, dancing, interactive games, and many others. We were able to see positive changes from the children throughout our 6 meetings over there at REACH. The children were able to interact more, engage in activities, and were also more comfortable doing the planting activities.

After

Most of the children were very excited for the planting activity during each of our meetings. The plants have grown successfully well, we managed to harvest most of the crops with the children. Everything worked really well. We were able to fulfil our objectives in running this project where we managed to nurture interest in planting to the autistic children in order to help to build their motor and social skills, thus promote their sensory integration. Now, REACH are incorporating our plantation project to one of their weekly activities with the children there.

In a long-term view, we hope that this project may pave way to generate some income to the centre in long run with the crop harvested from the planting as well as cultivate the interest in planting in the autistic children.

Throughout the project, there wasn’t much unanticipated difficulties except for language barriers. Majority of the autistic kids in REACH Segamat are Chinese and they have little or no knowledge at all in English nor Malay. It made it harder for us to communicate with those kids as they were not able to understand us well. However, the teachers and volunteers in REACH Segamat have been very helpful as they were always helping as well as guiding us to deliver our message to the kids.

a. In several paragraphs, address each of the following questions:

• How does or will your project contribute to happiness? Short-term? Long-term?

Before we ended this project, with the help of the parents and the teachers, we managed to teach the kids on how to take care of the plants by teaching them how to water, how to put seed into the soil, weeding, and also how to pick and harvest the vegetables. We observed that the parents gave full support and encouragement to the autistic kids to try on something new, something they might have never experienced before, until they want to do it without being asked which signifies that the kids can adapt and love to do all those activities.

Before we ended this project, with the help of the parents and the teachers, we managed to teach the kids on how to take care of the plants by teaching them how to water, how to put seed into the soil, weeding, and also how to pick and harvest the vegetables. We observed that the parents gave full support and encouragement to the autistic kids to try on something new, something they might have never experienced before, until they want to do it without being asked which signifies that the kids can adapt and love to do all those activities.

In a short-term perspective, we could see that the children were always happy and excited to be waiting for our arrival as they wanted to participate and do the activities that we would be doing together with them in each meeting.

On the other hand, from a long-term view, we had seen some tremendous changes from some of the children’s behaviour towards us as well as the people surrounding them. The positive changes in a way made the people around them, including their parents happy as it was really pleasing to see a special child making huge improvements.

Not to forget, our planting project is now being continued by the volunteers at REACH. The plantation would enable the children to have a continuous connection and impact from our project. The children loves doing the gardening activities hence REACH are able to retain the planting/gardening activities into one of their weekly activities with the children. Even though, our project is done, the impact towards happiness for the children is still there and alive.

• Has your project changed the way you think about the world? How has it changed you?

This project has opened our eyes that we now have a more understanding and deeper view on Autism. We can see that people with Autism have so much to offer albeit their disability. They have many talents, some in fact better than most of us. It has made us realized that these children has so much potential and future, but they need the right approach. Many people in the world still do not realize this as the awareness on Autism are not being pushed hard enough. Hence, this project have enabled us to gain a life changing experience that many have not been able to experience or realize yet. Moreover, this project has motivated us to push the awareness on Autism even more as we believe that it is important for everyone to be socially aware of Autistic people.

This project gave us life lessons that we cannot always assume all people are normal and can learn or adapt on something just in one click. There are people who needs extra encouragement and more than usual support even to do a simple thing and yes, it has shaped us to be more grateful and mindful of others. The planting activity gave a very big impact to the project team and also to the centre. Majority of the project team members do not have any prior experience or knowledge on planting. However, through this project, it has helped us to learn and gain something very valuable. Through this project also that it has broaden our views on how the children are perceive in the society while learning more deeply on autism through our social interaction with the children and the teachers.

b. Complete this section with a one to two sentence personal statement, suitable for use as a quotation, addressing how and why this project was valuable and what was the most important thing you learned as a result. (Indicate student’s name for quote attribution.)

“Autistic children has taught me the meaning of gratitude and what true love is. I’m happy that this project would have a lasting impact & benefit to the children” - Amira Bakri

“This project has taught me a lot in terms of how to plant, how to communicate with the autistic children and how to manage our plans. I gained a lot of valuable experience through this program.” - Nurul Suraya