Event

Dress Blue Day - 2 April 2018

APF organised “Dress Blue Day” again on 2 April, in respond to “World Autism Awareness Day” (designated by the United Nations General Assembly). The campaign aimed at calling on everyone to dress in blue which symbolise “showing support to individuals with Autism“. We drew the public awareness of Autism further by holding an event at apm (Kwun Tong) today.

Officiating guests attending the event to show support   

The event was officiated by Mr. Caspar Tsui, Under Secretary of Labour and Welfare, Mr. Toby Mountjoy, the Chairperson of APF and Ms. Kay Tse, renowned artiste and the Ambassador of  APF. All guests dressed blue to show support to people with Autism. Mr. Tsui gave us a speech, introduced some government policies for supporting people with Autism. He also pointed out that the public sector solely could not take care of all people in need and their carers; the engagement of non-government organisations, commercial sectors and community are very important. Furthermore, he encouraged parents keeping a positive attitude to overcome their problems and then to arrange suitable treatments for their children in order to catch their learning golden period, then to obtain the best results. He also requested the public to accept and understand more about Autism and to support children with Autism and their parents. 

Hoping the community be more understanding of Autism

Ching’s mum and Ho’s mum, two beneficiaries of APF talked about their challenges in taking care of their children during the event: they were forced to feel wronged, people had misunderstandings to Autism and embarrassing situations happened on them all the time. People passing-by and even their family members also had made some non-sense and unfair criticisms. APF asked for support from the public to people with Autism and their families; and encouraged people facing these challenges to express their needs, especially in seeking for suitable and effective treatments.

Ever-increasing prevalence of ASD together with its impacts are something that we cannot afford to ignore.  APF is going to transform “Dress Blue Day” to “Autism Awareness Month” from 2019 and inject more diversified elements into the campaign in order to draw more attention of the public on supporting people with Autism. The Team hopes that the enlarged scale of the campaign would “Increase Public Awareness of Autism, Spark the Power of Blue” in every April.