Dialogue in the Dark - Our Thoughts - BZSE Entreprise Creation 08

Monday, November 9, 2009 . shawnald
5:22 AM

Dialogue in the dark was an unforgettable experience for me. I have heard of this social enterprise since last year but have never really experienced it till that day. I was blinded by the blindness. Fear gripped me as soon as I stepped into the darkness. Never have I been so blind before. I have always pictured in my mind how the experience of DiD will seem like when the lecturers share with this social enterprise. In my mind, I thought of how the place will be like and how it will feel like. But when I really got to experience it, it was quite different from what I expected. I thought it would just be fun and exciting, but no.

After being in the dark after our sighted guide, Pei Bao, left us in the hands of our blind guide William, I realized the importance of our sight. For a moment, I was overwhelmed with fear. Fear, not because the darkness frightened me, fear because thoughts of being a blind one day struck me. I will never get to see my loved ones again. I will never get to see all the beautiful people that are close to me ever again. I remembered I remained silent for a moment. Those thoughts remained in my head throughout the experience. I began to put myself in the shoes of Williams. How painful it must have been to not be able to see his loved ones. It makes me reflect. Often, when we have conflict with our loved ones, we do not want to see them as deep down inside, we know that we will get to see them again, we CAN get to see them again. We take for granted the sight that God has given to us. But what if one day, God decides to take it away from us as we do not cherish it? The blind experience DiD provided was only an hour long. When we pay for the experience, at the back of our heads, we know that it is just for an hour. We will get to see again after an hour so we enjoyed ourselves in there. This is not the true feelings of a blind. He will never get to know when he will regain his sight. He may never.

During the journey inside, i enjoyed my invisibility though. The moment I kept quiet, I am invisible. My voice is the only thing that identifies me and helps others to indentify me. i was comfortably blind as I knew everyone around were my friends. But a real blind does not. In a world of strangers, he stands on his own, not knowing who is next to him at all. William did not know us, and he could not even see us at the end of the tour. However, he treated us nicely and he trusted us like how we trusted him.

There are no obstacles that cannot be overcome. As long as we believe and have faith, we can overcome anything. This is the greatest take away from the DiD experience.

I think DiD is a one of a kind social enterprise. No doubt that it hires only a few blind guides out of the total blind population in Singapore, but the strength of the is SE is creating values. It creates a value for the blind. It empowers the blind but letting them know that being blind does not make them weaker, but instead stronger than us. Everyone can eat with our sight, but not everyone can eat without our sight. It will be a good learning model as it has just started in Singapore and the students will have lots to do in terms of its marketing, adjustment and stuffs.

BZSE students can help as volunteers in DiD. On top of that, we can help in terms of marketing and its publicity as it not as well-known in Singapore yet. We can come up with new ideas of being in the dark like caught in the rain when you are blind, etc. Another way to contribute is very straight forward, which is to recommend the experience to our friends and ask them to try. =)

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Welcome to the blog of BZSE 2008 about our takeaways after visiting the one-and-only Dialogue-in-the-Dark (DiD) exhibition in Singapore, at Ngee Ann Polytechnic.
BZSE 2008 represents the pioneer cohort of students from the Diploma in Business & Social Enterprise (BZSE), the one-and-only such diploma programme in Singapore.

BZSE is housed in the School of Humanities in Ngee Ann Polytechnic. It's the coolest diploma ever - we learn about creating businesses with a social cause.

Our whole cohort had a really great tour in the DiD exhibition, and it was so fantastic we decided to post up our experiences as a blog to share the experiences we had during the tour.
We hope that after reading our reflections, you will consider coming down to DID yourself! Just as we have been impacted, we believe Your life will never be the same again. (=

To find out more about the DiD tours, you can call the Booking Hotline @ 64606222 or check out the website at www.dialogueinthedark.com.sg Navigate around using the tabs above.