Published in: #lovesomeonewithautism

The Tiger and The Tree

Author EAP Malaysia

Published on: February 10, 2022

We were over the moon and full of pride when little Azizy’s artwork was featured on the exclusive Segambut Chinese New Year angpao! These cute tiger angpaos were given out by YB Hannah Yeoh’s office, and were also printed on CNY banners in Segambut.YB Hannah’s Facebook post detailing the story about the picture touched many, and it was featured in various media outlets such as World of Buzz, The Rakyat Post, says.com, WeirdKaya, SinChew and GuangMing.The Behind StoryYB Hannah Yeohrequested a drawing from Azizy for her 2022 angpao packet, after seeing his drawings at our Early Autism Project x UTme! Collaboration last December. However, the process of creating this art piece had some challenges due to the short timeline.. Upon receiving the request, Azizy drew a few versions of a tiger based on some samples. This was his second version of a tiger, but crumpled it up out of frustration of his mistake on accidentally colouring one part of the tiger blue.Thankfully Azizy’s team and Michelle Yong, our THP Coordinator managed to salvage his drawing and here’s the end product!

Working with individuals with autism, we are no stranger to the various hurdles of their journey in living a meaningful and being successful in their daily life. What we don’t always know are the behind the scenes stories the rocks and stones of the road to success for our kiddos.

Azizy was also involved in our amazing EAP x UTme! Collaboration that happened last December. It was a project featuring our kiddos’ artwork as part of the UTme! collection, where customers can design their own shirts and tote bags with our kiddos’ drawing.

Here’s a peek to some of the behind-the-scenes of the project:

After working with UNIQLO for 2 years on social media campaigns to raise awareness on autism, we discussed the idea of featuring our kiddo’s artwork into their UTme! Collection.

We started off by notifying all the families we work with and inviting the kiddos to participate by creating their artwork. Our EAP supervisors helped to coordinate with parents whilst therapists of our EAP team also helped to guide the kids in creating their artwork.

Upon receiving the artworks, the EAP team then processed it so that it is in tip-top conditions: quality scanning with no shadows, ensuring all parts are visible, editing the vibrancy of the colours of the artwork so that it stands out against the white shirt etc. Each artwork had to pass the quality scan check.

In preparation of the launch, descriptions were generated by the kiddos and gathered by the EAP team. Therapists on the kid’s team worked on preparing the kiddos for the launch. Some tasks include: preparing social story, visual schedule, video models, practises of the presentation and rehearsal.

On the UNIQLO end, they created posters and visuals for the launch, prepared a room for the kiddos to wait in between the presentation periods, which allowed them to be functionally occupied with activities prepared by their therapists.

For our kiddos, behind every success was hard work and effort from numerous practises, including flexibility and tolerance training. And along with it, a team of loving and supportive families and therapists that are incredibly committed to their progress and wellbeing. We hope these would help raise awareness on autism, and our biggest wish is to see the increase in acceptance of individuals with diverse needs in the society. They may be different, but they are not any less! Let’s create a kinder world, and love someone with autism today!

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