More than 40 Special Needs Children Visit AUD Fun Day Event

By LUMA KUDSIOVA

More than 40 special needs children from the Special Families Support Group gathered at the American University in Dubai with their families this Saturday afternoon to attend the Fun Day event organized by the AUD International Aid Club (AIA).

Rishabh Ghuwalewala, the Vice President of the AIA Club, says that the main purpose of the event was to “give AUD students the idea of what these children go through on a day to day basis” and allows them to further interact with the kids. Likewise Gulshan Kavarana, the founder of SFS, also believes that the aim is to raise awareness about children with special needs, which is possible through such interactions between the students and kids.

Various other collaborators including The Agency, AUD Debate Club, Lebanese Cultural Club, Women in Engineering, Water Environment Federation, Association of Computing Machinery, American Standard of Civil Engineering, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers participated in arranging different activities for the children such as hand painting, karaoke, henna, face paintings, open buffet, and many others.

Hiba Bou Daher, the President of the Lebanese Cultural Club, explains her club’s input for the kids. Her club arranged various art activities where the children could paint with watercolors and play with play dough. “It’s the least the club could do for these kids”, she expresses. “This event was a very good opportunity to help the children.”

The President of the Association for Computing Machinery, Lilan Haj Hussain, reveals that the most fundamental aspect that drove her club to participate was because the event was for a good cause and that they have prepared face painting for the kids along with some henna tattoos as their contribution.

“It’s a great change from the usual academic events we have,” says Hussain. Although Hussain has not participated in such events before, she hopes to take part in similar activities again in the future especially since this one was a major success.

Mrs. Kavarana also gathered the students to teach them some basic words and the English alphabets in American Sign Language.

“I learnt how to sign the alphabets and even managed to spell out my name and some words, so I think this was very effective” says Zainab Ezzeddine, a volunteer for the Lebanese Cultural Club at the event. “It really motivated me to learn more of the American Sign Language so I would be able to communicate with more special needs kids in the future.” She continues saying that she really liked the event because she saw “so many children having fun especially at the karaoke and the face painting stand. I think that everything set a very nice atmosphere for this event.”

Alia Monzer, a senior at AUD believes that “it’s great that they are introducing events like this at AUD, and it really brings people closer together. Its great learning how to interact with people with special needs and it’s always a pleasure to help them”. She also believes the event is great the way it is, however, “it would be even better if they include more games in the future for the children.”

Parents of two, who attended the event, Puboshi and Ajya Kapoor, say, “We really hope [AUD] has more of these events since we would come for each and every one of them. Both our children were handled by [the volunteers]. Our son played football and our daughter loved the face painting and play dough activity.”

“Everything in this event was really beautiful”, they concluded.

At the end of the event, the children gathered up for a final dance and the volunteers were given certificates of appreciation signed by Kavarana, who says that “it’s really nice to see young kids from university doing something for the community”.