COSMOS 40-Hour Challenge raises awareness and money
Joshua Chaplin
Public relations editorial intern
Cooranbong, New South Wales, Australia
Members of a mission club at Avondale College have gone 40 hours without hearing, seeing or talking to support students with an impairment in India.
Joshua Stothers’s commitment to the COSMOS 40-Hour Challenge helped raise money for a school for the hearing and speech impaired in India. Credit: Krissie Hopkins.
The 23 students who joined the COSMOS 40-Hour Challenge spoke of feeling isolated and lonely during their time of simulated disability, which began at 6.00 PM on Monday and ended at 10.00 AM on Wednesday this past week. This new take on the 40-hour famine raised awareness of the emotional and physical state of those with an impairment, says president Joshua Zyderveld.
Bachelor of Science/Bachelor of Teaching student Danny Green, who completed the challenge without the sense of sight, walked into walls and windows despite using a fishing rod as a cane. He speaks highly of the sense of community at Avondale, noting how other students “went out of their way” to help. The experience has given Danny more respect for those with a sight impairment and has inspired him to begin planning a yearend mission trip.
All money raised by COSMOS this year will support the building of a vocational training centre for students at Asian Aid’s Kollegal School for Speech and Hearing Impaired Children. The school hopes to teach the students, among other skills, how to use computers because some employers prefer hiring the hearing impaired for data entry because they are not easily distracted in the workplace.