ACE ATT3 Proposal

Essay by ArchangelWingedHigh School, 10th grade September 2013

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Dear class,

As part of our Active Citizenry Education curriculum, we were tasked to look into serious issues in Singaporean society that can potentially harm its stability and well-being if not handled properly. After extensive research, we realise that the issue of a negative community attitude and a lack of understanding towards the intellectually disabled poses a serious problem as this attitude of theirs would cause them to be oblivious to the capabilities of the disabled. The society tend to misunderstand the disabled to be incapable of doing simple tasks and pity them, which leads to a social discrimination against the disabled. However, the disabled has the ability of performing tasks just like any other normal person, which the society has a lack of knowledge about. Social discrimination or even pity towards the disabled may cause many to develop a prejudice towards them, whereby they feel that they are unsuitable to join the workforce.

The National Council of Social Services have tried to resolve this issue by launching a campaign with the tagline, "We are Able! Enhancing Possibilities, Celebrating Abilities", to raise the awareness on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) that Singapore has signed on 30 November 2013 as well as to promote the vision of Singapore's Enabling Masterplan of building an inclusive society. Although this has helped the situation by educating Singaporeans about the disabled and their abilities and contributions to the society, hence helping the disabled to gain acceptance by the public, there remain many inadequacies such as a lack of outreach, whereby not many people are aware of this convention and the measures Singapore is undertaking to resolve the issue.

As such, we propose to work with the Movement for the Intellectually Disabled of Singapore (MINDS) to spread information about...