It was that time of the year again where EAP organised our most-anticipated Annual Family Day to celebrate every single one of our children and their families! On the 22nd of June 2024, our Family Day was held at Tuanku Bainun, TTDI! This year’s theme “Go For Gold!” is in conjunction with the Paris 2024 Olympics! It was such an eventful day, buzzing with excitement, happiness and love where everyone came together to honour our kiddos and their families! 

As families arrived, our EAP team transitioned our kiddos to the show waiting area to go through final preparations before the show began! While waiting for the official show to begin, we had some booths outside the theater including a grazing table filled with healthy snacks in line with our Olympic theme  hosted by our boys from the Life Skills Group where people could take anything they wanted for a minimal donation to our non-profit arm, The Hope Project! 

The Hope Project’s booth this year was a great hit as aside from our merchandise sale, one of our EAP teenagers, Sinan also set up a booth to showcase and  sell his canvas artwork! Proceeds from these booths are also channeled to The Hope Project to make world-class services for autism accessible to all! An instant photo booth was also set up for families to take family pictures and capture these exciting moments!

The event started at 9.30am in the morning, with speeches from our Director, Jochebed Isaacs, Senior Supervisor and BCBA Rachel Gomez and Senior Supervisor, Chau Yu Chen as they shared highlights of all that has happened at EAP throughout the year! Family Day officially launched with the National Anthem ‘Negaraku’ before the production began. 

This year, our Family Day was themed “Go For GOLD!” in conjunction with Malaysia’s 2024 Olympics theme! The production  surrounded the story of a few kiddos trying out for the Mini Olympics with their coach at various sports such as football, badminton and swimming and giving their best shot at the different sports! In between each tryouts, they were joined by our other kiddos on stage for the various dance scenes! Our Subsidised Unit kiddos also joined us for a special performance in the football scene and all our 60 kiddos got to participate in the family day through the various scenes  and perform for their families!

After the sport tryouts, the kids quickly realised that whilst they are trying their best in the respective sport, they may not achieve the results they are after and began to feel a little demotivated. At this moment, we had the honour  of having a surprise special guest, YB Hannah Yeoh, Minister of Youth and Sports to reassure the kids “you need to run your own race, at your own pace and most of all, to finish the race. And that is as good as gold, YOU are as good as gold! Whilst everyone wants to pursue Gold, not everyone will be able to win a  Gold. However, each journey is truly as good as Gold and to continue the race of life without giving up!”

YB Hannah Yeoh was joined by our Director, Jochebed Isaacs  to present medals and trophies to each of our kiddos. The awards were to acknowledge and appreciate their efforts in overcoming various challenges as well as celebrate their unique and diverse strengths! 

They also presented Long Service Awards to team members who had served for 3 years, 5 years, 7 years and years long! We also presented The Hope Project Award to 1 family for their notable contributions in helping to raise awareness and funds for autism and The Hope Project! Congratulations to everyone receiving awards! 

What an amazing time we had at Family Day 2024! We were so proud of our children being able to tolerate the new place, changes and generalising their flexibility targets as well!

The storyline ended with the kids celebrating for being in this journey together in their race to pursue gold in life! Our kiddos and team then ended the show with a finale dance entitled “We’re all in this together!” – it was truly a heartwarming moment!

Here are some fun facts about 2024 Family Day!

• The EAP team started planning for this Family Day production in April 2024 – it is a large- scale effort that took a lot of planning and careful consideration. 
• About 60 of our kiddos participated on stage, appeared in videos, received awards and practiced hard for their scenes – a team effort to ensure all our kiddos have a space to shine!
• Some of our kiddos had to work through 12 different tolerances in preparation for this production such as Tolerance to Lights, Tolerance to Crowds and Tolerance to New places to name a few! 
• There were more than 400 social stories and visuals prepared to make this production possible.
• In addition to their comprehensive therapy programmes, our kiddos have been rehearsing every day for 6 weeks,  and have also had 3 full dress rehearsals at Tuanku Bainun before the actual production day! 

Here at EAP, Family Day is to celebrate our kiddos, as well as their family, for the hard work and effort put in to achieve every milestone, revealing their unique strengths, talents and skills. We also want to celebrate the families that had been such a precious support to each of our kiddo. We also honour all parents and caregivers who show up every single day to each and every one of our kiddos – in guiding the path and molding them into who they are today! Thank you for all that you do! We were humbled by their sacrifices, hardwork and love.

We sincerely thank all the parties involved in the production, for making this year’s Family Day a successful one!