The Human Camera (Autistic Savant Documentary) | Real Stories
Autistic Savants are children and adults who have an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and who display remarkable abilities or skills in one or several domains. This is a documentary about Stephen Wiltshire – a human camera known for his ability to draw landscapes from memory with just one look.
What Is Autism?
Autism is a lifelong developmental disability that affects a person’s ability to make sense of the world and relate with others. Autism comes from ‘autos’, the Greek word for ‘self’, and a person with autism is often referred to as someone who lives in a world of his own.
What Causes Autism?
Although there are many theories, no one fully knows the definitive answer to this question. Research shows that autism can be caused by a variety of conditions that affect brain development, which may occur before, during or after birth.
While the cause or combination of causes of autism is not fully understood, research suggests a biological correlation affecting the parts of the brain that process language and information coming in from the senses. Other research findings suggest that there may be an imbalance in certain chemicals in the brain. Genetic factors may sometimes be involved in certain families. In reality, what we know is that autism may develop from a combination of several “causes”.
The lack of understanding about autism can make it difficult for people on the autism spectrum to have their condition recognize and for them to access the support they need. False and often negative perceptions about the condition as well as misconceptions can lead to some people with autism being isolated and in extreme cases, lead to abuse and bullying.
The Magic When Kids And Seniors Do Daycare Together | How Germany Gets Ageing Right | CNA Insider
Joyce Teo, PUBLISHED
SEP 29, 2015
As Singapore ages, the older folk may lose touch with the younger generation. The opposite holds true too, giving rise to misconceptions of each other. But these are often dispelled at courses organised by the Council for Third Age’s (C3A) Intergenerational Learning Programme (ILP). Here, students from primary and secondary schools, polytechnics and the Institute of Technical Education teach senior citizens various subjects like information technology, social media and photography.
Over 6,000 seniors and students have taken part in the programme, which started in 2011. It has been so successful that C3A plans to expand it over the next few years, said Ms Soh Swee Ping, chief executive of the active ageing agency. It is also holding an inaugural conference on positive ageing next month, and has developed a toolkit for seniors to help them discover their interests. It will launch 500 such kits at the conference, said Ms Soh.
These plans come as the Government is ramping up plans to get people to age well, amid an ageing population and rising life expectancy. Last month, it announced a $3 billion plan to help Singaporeans age confidently and lead active lives. More details will be released next year. By 2030, it is estimated that 900,000 people, or one-fifth of the population here, will be over 65.
More research on ageing issues will also be done to make successful ageing a reality for more people. At The Next Age Institute, a pilot study on care pathways has taken off, and an interim report of the findings is expected around the end of next year. The study will provide insights into care arrangements for older people as they transit from hospital to community or home care, said Associate Professor Corinne Ghoh, co-director of the institute at the National University of Singapore (NUS) Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.
The institute, jointly set up by NUS and Washington University in St Louis in the United States in February, has been contributing to the discussions and new knowledge on active and successful ageing. In November, it will co-organise a symposium that will facilitate discussion on active ageing.
At C3A, there is a rising demand for the ILP, said Ms Soh. Seniors are quick to sign up for these courses, in which they may learn how to talk on Skype, use Facebook or do public speaking, she said. They also get to interact with the youth and vice versa. Said Ms Soh: “The youth may think that the seniors are clumsy, stupid, have butterfingers or can’t learn.
Closing the generation gap
“But at the end of the six to eight sessions, they may find that the seniors are not scary. This translates to them interacting more with their grandparents at home.”
The seniors benefit, too, as they may also have certain preconceptions of young people, said Ms Soh. She said C3A can work with more partners and schools to expand the programme. The ILP could also evolve so that senior folk become the teachers.
“They can teach dialects or customs. It doesn’t matter, as what we want to achieve is the bonding,” says Ms Soh.
Associate Professor Reshma Merchant, who heads the general medicine division at National University Hospital, said the inter-generational gap is getting wider and “empathy towards the elderly may decline if this trend continues”.
Co-locating eldercare and childcare facilities in new Housing Board developments to maximise opportunities for intergenerational interaction is an excellent idea, she said.
“Most elderly people feel much more valued when surrounded by young kids and, in return, the young ones will learn about culture and tradition,” she added. Ms Soh said that to age well, seniors also need to embrace ageing.
The third age is a phase where people may look at life in a more meaningful way. It can start at 50 or even 60 but, typically, people from 50 may begin to view life differently, whereas those who are younger could be focusing on financial stability, she added. C3A hopes to get people to view ageing positively at its inaugural positive ageing conference. Ms Soh said: “Even when we say active ageing, people tend to associate it with the physical aspect. But it also includes the spiritual, financial and intellectual aspect.”
The toolkit that C3A is set to launch will allow seniors to assess which of these dimensions they are lacking in. Ms Soh said: “There will be a score, which will give a sense of where you are, so that you know what to do next. For example, if your intellectual score is low, you can read a book or go for a course.”
Fist clenched, a look of pure determination on his face, Success Kid is the boy who can do it all. You may have seen his face posted when someone’s particularly proud of an achievement.
Success Kid’s real name is Sam Griner and the photo is one of many his mother Laney, a photographer, took of her son and posted on her Flickr page. She still remembers the day and the moment she snapped this picture.
“He was so funny, crawling through the sand and then trying to eat fistfuls of it. He would move so quickly then, it was hard to snap shots of him sitting still,” she said.
“I only got that one shot of him, and going through my camera on the drive home, I immediately loved it. I posted it to my Flickr account as soon as I got home, and it was an immediate hit.
“It’s funny because so often people, usually those with little experience with toddlers, assume it’s a posed photo. Good luck trying to get a toddler to pose like that.”
The picture was taken in 2007, but it wasn’t until two years later Griner began noticing it around the internet. Initially, someone had photoshopped a crying child in the background with the title “I hate sandcastles”.
Griner admits: “I didn’t like it at all then. It was at the beginning of the whole meme thing. Sammy was still a baby and I didn’t even know what a meme was at that time, I just didn’t like him being portrayed as a bully.”
Fortunately, a year later, the meme changed and Sam became Success Kid, which Griner says she thought was “just adorable”. This led to Sam starring in commercials for Virgin Media in the UK and in the US in commercials for Vitamin Water.
And does Griner have any tips for parents whose children inadvertently become internet-famous? “Now it’s maybe a little different because memes and internet stardom is more widely known,” she said.
“But still, it’s got to be a surprise for most anyone who finds themselves in this situation. I think the best thing to do is accept it, because once the internet has it, it’s really out of your control, for the most part.
“Most importantly, retain the copyright to your photo, because the internet has now made it marketable. Not that you must now seek to market it, but it’s nice to have some control over how it’s used, and the right to take legal action over unauthorized use for commercial purposes.”
As for Sam, who turned eight this year, Success Kid is something he’s grown up with and is fully aware of.
“It’s strange to think he’ll never remember a time he wasn’t. He mostly really likes it. We’ve only done a couple of appearances, so it’s mostly just the photo. He likes it and it sort of embarrasses him.
“All of it is pretty awesome. Just that it happened to us. I took a photo of my kid at the beach, like any parent might, and posted for friends and family to see. Who could’ve ever known what would happen next? It’s been full of fun experiences and financially has helped quite a bit. I have no real complaints. I feel pretty fortunate.”
Louis Bromfield, (born Dec. 27, 1896, Mansfield, Ohio, U.S.—died March 18, 1956, Columbus, Ohio), American novelist and essayist.
The son of a farmer, Bromfield studied journalism at Columbia University and was decorated for his service in the French army, which he joined at the outbreak of World War I. After the war, he worked as a music critic in New York City for a few years. After marrying in 1923, he moved to a village north of Paris, where he concentrated on his writing.
During these expatriate years, Bromfield produced his most highly acclaimed novels, including The Green Bay Tree (1924), Possession (1925), and Early Autumn (1926), for which he was awarded the 1926 Pulitzer Prize. Although written in France, these works, along with his best novel, A Good Woman (1927), all focused on life in the United States. Each of them dealt with the attempts of individuals to escape the domination of family and tradition.
With the onset of World War II, Bromfield returned to the United States to live and work on his newly acquired farm, Malabar, near Lucas, Ohio. There he continued with his writing, producing Wild is the River (1941), Until the Day Break (1942), Mrs. Parkington (1943), and What Became of Anna Bolton(1944). Little of his later work attained the depth or quality of the novels he wrote in France.
Women have been at the forefront of the fight for human rights for centuries but till today, we don’t often hear their names in Asia. This International Women’s Day, Eco-Business celebrates the work of Asia’s unsung heroines.
A woman in East Java asking the participants from her hometown of Malang to highlight how women and girls contribute to peace in their communities. Image: UN Women/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
A woman in East Java asking the participants from her hometown of Malang to highlight how women and girls contribute to peace in their communities.
A quick google search on female activists in Asia doesn’t turn up many results, even though many Asian women have made history for breaking gender norms while many more today continue to fight against all odds to achieve greater rights for women and other marginalised communities.
In these turbulent times, marred by environmental degradation and deepening social inequality, women make up the growing number of leaders and activists who are defending their land and communities against the incursions of the rich and powerful, while others continue to lead the charge for progress on gender equality, climate action and social justice.
From halting the expansion of coal to providing education for indigenous children in the remote jungle and starting the conversation about sexual harassment, Eco-Business highlights several women defending human rights and driving change across different industries.
Here are seven Asian women you should look out for.
Ngụy Thị Khanh, Vietnam’s climate crusader
Having grown up near a coal plant, Nguy Thi Khanh, Vietnam’s leading female environmentalist knew firsthand the downside of her country’s reliance on fossil fuel. Many people in her community developed cancer because of the air pollution from coal plants and she has spent her life coaxing her country away from dirty energy.
Nguy Thi Khanh is known for her tireless work pushing the Vietnamese’s government to move away from coal. Image: Nguy Thi Khanh CC BY 3.0
In 2011, after years working to limit water pollution from mining and other industrial sources, Khanh founded the Green Innovation and Development Centre (Green ID) to promote sustainable energy development and better water and air governance in Vietnam as well as educate rural communities on renewable energy.
She was also awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2018 for her work with the Vietnamese government on long term strategies to shift the country away from coal.
While she has been recognised as a grassroots activist at home and abroad, Khanh, in her admiration of youth climate activist Greta Thunberg, admits in an article that the Swede’s brand of activism “is not possible in Vietnam.” She has had to drive positive change without getting in trouble with the authorities and well-connected energy giants, who have targeted her in smear campaigns.
Despite the odds, Khanh and her team convinced the Vietnamese government to take away 20,000 megawatts of coal power from the national energy plan by 2030.
Bandana Rana, Nepal’s taboo tackler
Journalist and gender rights activist Bandana Rana has been working to eliminate discrimination and violence against women since she first documented the stories of rural women as a television reporter 30 years ago.
Bandana Rana is the founder of Saathi, a women’s rights organisation that tackles violence against women and aims to empower women with economic opportunities. Image: Flickr
Today, she is the co-founder of Saathi, a prominent non-profit women’s rights organisation working on domestic violence in Nepal, and Sancharika, a forum for women journalists that trains local media to dispel stereotypical perceptions of women and promote equity in society.
Rana is also the first Nepali woman to be elected as vice-chairperson at the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), which acts as an international bill of rights for women.
“As a citizen of a small South Asian country, I take that perspective to a global scale,” she said in an interview with the Nepali Times, adding that her work as a communicator allows her to simplify the legal jargon of CEDAW documents, which paves the way for more constructive dialogue.
Today, more women are openly talking about domestic violence and sexual abuse — topics which were previously taboo in Nepal, she said.
“Things have changed now, and the women who spoke up have encouraged others, especially younger girls, to speak out.”
Sophia Huang Xueqin, pioneer of China’s #MeToo
Sophia Huang Xueqin was the first to bring sexual harassment in the workplace to light in China.
While much of the world’s attention has been on the #MeToo movement in the United States, where it began, the momentum against sexual harassment has been building up in China, where journalist and activist Sophia Huang has been leading the fight for the past three years.
In 2017, Huang, who worked as an investigative reporter for Chinese-language news outlets, conducted a nationwide survey to find out the extent of workplace harassment in China’s media industry and started an online platform where victims could share accounts and information on sexual harassment.
The following year, she produced “Workplace harassment of women journalists in China,” an investigative report that revealed how more than 80 per cent of female journalists had been sexually harassed at work.
Last year, the figure who brought #MeToo to the Chinese public was detained after participating in protests against the anti-extradition law in Hong Kong; the authorities accused her of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.”
Huang was released in January after three months in detention.
Hasina Kharbhih, India’s trafficking fighter
Hasina has saved tens of thousands of women and children from being trafficked across the region.
She’s been attacked and her office ransacked multiple times, but that has not stopped Hasina Kharbih from her work to end child trafficking across India’s Northeast states, which are a source, transit and destination point for cross-border trafficking in the region. In India, human trafficking makes up a $32 billion industry, of which female minors comprise 40 per cent of sex workers.
“There is a different dimension of problems that you have to deal with especially when you are a woman challenging the male dominated system,” she told Eco-Business. “It was never easy but I hope to see more women in this field establish themselves because no gender should qualify a position or space.”
Through her organisations the Impulse NGO Network and Impulse Social Enterprises, she has saved over 72, 000 people through the internationally known Impulse Model and empowered more than 30, 000 women artisans. Kharbhih believes that making women economically self-sufficient by creating sustainable livelihoods goes a long way in preventing unsafe migration and human trafficking.
When asked what she feels about the global women’s movement, she said: “I think there is nothing more noteworthy or powerful than women taking a stand for each other. The fact that women have started to speak up and voice their opinions from different parts of the world is an achievement in itself. Women’s issues are global and many countries are recognising it. We still have a long way to go but as long as we do it together, we shape a better future for each other.”
Tep Vanny, Cambodia’s land rights leader
Tep Vanny is well-known in Cambodia for her activism in defending human and land rights.
Land rights activist Tep Vanny has been fighting for her community, the Boeng Kak lakeshore community, since 2007 after the Cambodian government granted a land concession to a local tycoon and Chinese company to develop a luxury residential and commercial space. Since then, most of the 4,000 resident families on the land have been forcibly displaced.
Leading an army of mostly women from her community, 38-year-old Vanny has been the face of protests against the evictions and continues to fight for justice so that every displaced family receives legal rights to their land.
In 2016, while protesting against the arbitrary detention of human rights defenders in Cambodia, she was arrested by the authorities and later sentenced to two and a half years in prison for previous charges. She was released in 2018 after a royal pardon from the king.
Vanny was the 2013 recipient of the Vital Voices Global Leadership Award which honours groundbreaking women “standing on the frontlines of change and creating solutions to some of the world’s most intractable problems.”
Butet Manurung, Indonesia’s jungle teacher
Butet Manurung started Sokola Rimba to provide alternative education to indigenous children in the remote jungles of Indonesia.
An adventurer and nature lover, Butet Manurung is well-known in Indonesia for her activism that has raised awareness on indigenous communities and provided alternative education for indigenous children in remote jungles across the archipelago.
Manurung runs training programmes that focus on improving understanding of indigenous communities in Indonesia so that universities, non-governmental organisations and companies can work in favour of local communities.
She started Sokola Rimba, or Jungle School, in 2003 in order to equip isolated tribal communities with skills in both literacy and advocacy. To date, Sokolo has benefited over 10,000 indigenous children and adults across eight provinces in Indonesia.
“We realised that it was of most importance to help indigenous peoples manage their own issues, and to support them in organising their own communities to fight for their rights,” said Manurung in an interview. “We now support communities to self-identify problems, and we work to establish a network so that they can overcome the issues as a community.”
Butet received the UNESCO Man and Biosphere Award in 2001 and the TIME Magazine Hero of Asia award in 2007.
Nurul Jihadah, Singapore’s inclusivity champion
Companies are all about diversity and inclusion these days, but Nurul Jihadah Hussain wants to make sure they go beyond being corporate buzzwords and affect real change in offices, businesses and boardrooms in Singapore.
Nurul Jihadah, middle, is the founder of The Codette Project, a ground-up initiative that aims to build a supportive tech ecosystem for minority and Muslim women. Image: The Codette Project
Recognising that minority and Muslim women were underrepresented in tech, she founded The Codette Project in 2015, a non-profit, ground-up initiative that aims to build a more inclusive tech ecosystem.
Through events, workshops and hackathons, The Codette Project aims to provide more support and opportunities for minority Muslim women to develop skills in tech, which she believes is the levelest playing field today considering “tech is in every industry.”
In 2018, her organisation ran Singapore’s first women-only hackathon, Tech for Good, which sought to build a safe space for women of all backgrounds to come together and provide innovative tech solutions to address social issues.
When asked what gives her hope today, she said: “Being successful as someone from a minority is a daily act of resistance, because it means that your success is something that is not commonly imagined. Your existence in places and spaces where you don’t see anyone who looks like you is a struggle. But I see more and more young women doing that and more people being allies to those women. That gives me a lot of hope for the future, that diversity will one day be taken as essential and normal.”
Bandana Rana is the founder of Saathi, a women’s rights organisation that tackles violence against women and aims to empower women with economic opportunities. Image: Flickr
