Catering to hope

KIDS often say the most profound statements. Just yesterday, my precocious nephew Pannon said, “Uncle, the weather gets depression because there’s too much trouble in the world.“

Amen to that, Kiddo. Is there no sunshine showing through the dark clouds of global woes and local problems? Where’s the silver lining behind the gray clouds?

Sometimes I just gloss over hard news then move on to lighter or uplifting or strange news on the internet. Many times, I click on YouTube videos to watch again the best of “Bubble Gang,” “Juan for All,” “Bright Side,” “Fool Us” or food channels—stuff like that.

Then one day, I found news at OurBetterWorld.org (OBW) about a father who worried about the future of his teenage son who has autism.

Mohd Adli Yahya, the father of the 19-year-old boy, pondered upon the prospect of his son Muhammad Luqman Shariff’s survival. Thoughts like “Who would take care of him?” and “How will he fend for himself?” dogged him no end.

Luqman’s disability was further complicated because he was non-verbal. The story on OBW noted that being unable to speak is a subset of autism.

In 2016, Adli quit his job so he could build an insurance to Luqman’s future self-sufficiency. He started Autism Cafe Project, which is a catering business that would give people with autism a degree of independence.

The cafe trains other young people who have autism in food services and also aims to educate the public about autism spectrum disorder (ASD). According to autismspeaks.org, ASD refers to a wide “range of conditions characterized with social skills, repetitive behaviors, speech and nonverbal communication.”

Pop-up kiosks were also designed by the cafe to sell nasi lemak, a snack made with rice and coconut milk and wrapped in banana leaf. It is akin to a rice cake made in Cebu City. It is made with glutinous rice cooked in thick coco milk and wrapped in banana leaf in the shape of a triangle.

Adli felt that the day Luqman was able to make his first nasi lemak all by himself was a milestone. Working in the pop-up cafe gave Luqman (and other youth with the disability) a chance to interact with people and for people to know more intimately about autism.

Adli told OBW he hopes “the public would understand the parents and the special needs of people with autism.” He wants to change the public view about the disability. And that people with autism are not unproductive and instead to see them as people who have potential.

I found my silver lining. There is hope for Luqman. There is hope for all of us.

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