Youth Resilience Foundation aims to change attitudes of peers, parents and teachers towards students with disabilities to reach their full potential through awareness and compassion. In the eyes of many, anyone not fitting in is deemed “special”. We seek to empower disabled youth and help others empathise with them. This summer, the Founder will co-author a children’s book which illustrates the difficulties of a student with Tourette’s syndrome. This book would help parents support their children with Tourette’s, and to better understand their child’s struggles. For schools, it aims to reduce peer bullying through building awareness.

Step 1 - Content Curation: As the Founder of Youth Resilience Foundation,I will personally draft the story based on my personal experiences as a youth living with Tourette’s syndrome. It will highlight mostly highs and few lows as a reflection of my personal life. This will be my very first book, and I take pride in the fact that I am pouring my raw emotions into this to-be-named title. \r\nStep 2 - Book Production: This book will be around 20 pages, of a story of a student based in Hong Kong, to be published in both English and Chinese. It is envisioned that around 100 copies will be physically printed (and laminated to allow for daily sanitisation). \r\nStep 3 - Distribution: In terms of distribution, primarily on the people, organisations and institutions which this book will be availed to, a three-pronged approach based on need, accessibility and impactfulness will be deployed.

To maximize the scale of this project, the Youth Resilience Foundation intends to, leveraging on both local and regional networks of individuals and organizations interacting with children suffering from both physical and mental disabilities, build a network of stakeholders who will further the vision of empowering young writers and authors to speak their minds. As the book is quite reproducible, both physically and digitally, it will be relatively straightforward to build. An online forum will also be created on the foundation website to further commenting and other forms of interaction amongst the stakeholders. Ultimately, if successful, a series of children’s books, each about a different disability/obstacle that a student may have to overcome, will follow through with the facilitation of the Foundation and its supporters. It is also expected that, using the latest text-to-speech technology, an audio book, in both English and Chinese, as well as featuring both male and female voices, will be made available to cater to those who have visual related limitations.

Many parties will become stakeholders to the initiative preliminarily titled “All are Special” for Summer 2020. ITS Education, with the support of Global Citizen Capital and Better Foundation, will assist the Founder establish the framework to not only co-author a book with a meaningful and emphatic story, but also to scale its impact to as wider a community as possible. Friends of the founder skilled at digital illustrations to assist with providing thought-inducing pictures, all original, to highlight the emotions experienced by the characters in the book. As someone who suffers from Tourette’s syndrome, the Founder will activate her community of friends and allies who have to persevere and rise above the struggles on a daily basis, and their collective wisdom and advice will shine throughout the narrative of the book. Professionals, including medical experts in the field of Tourett’s syndrome, will be consulted, including those from Queen Mary hospital and its specialised division. It is the mission of Youth Resilience Foundation to, through this to-be-named book, to inspire any and all individuals to conquer their innate sense of privilege and entitlement associated with being “normal”, and truly give a helping hand to all those they deem “special”.

ITS Education, Global Citizen Capital and Better Together Foundation