A group of medical students stage a play to raise funds for visually-impaired children.
Contributed By Dawn Seow
Students put up a stage play: Common.
Medical students put up a stage play: Uncommon.
Medical students put up a stage play to raise funds for visually-impaired children: Priceless.
Project “Make It Happen” is an undertaking by a group of first year medicine students from National University of Singapore’s Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine. Started three months ago,this project aims to raise funds for Lighthouse School, a school for visually-impaired children.
The team hopes to raise S$5,000 to help purchase E-Braille Books for the children, as well as revamp their school library and provide a conducive environment to read. They hope this will motivate the children to study hard and excel. An E-Braille book uses the audio software JAWS, which reads out instructions and narrates content in textbooks to the visually-impaired.
“We had a script and we were looking to bless a charity organization,” explains Toh Ting Ting, 19, one of the actors. “When we came across Lighthouse School, we realized they don’t receive enough help and we decided to help them.”
Gathering friends from NUS and National Technology University’s Facility of Arts and Social Science, the students managed to form a team of 30 comprising a director, four scriptwriters, set managers, choreographers, musicians and actors. The play is a light-hearted comedy comprising little vignettes about the conundrums of being human.
“Entitled The 6 Deadly Commandments, the play deals with the concept of human flaws. It was written in the hope that the audience will leave wanting to be better people. To lighten the atmosphere of such a solemn topic, the scriptwriters chose to use comedy. But our primary purpose of the drama is to contribute and make a difference in the lives of the blind children,” said Toh.
The team will see the fruits of their labor on Jan.13 and 14 when the play opens to the public.
