Equip deafblind children with skills for life!

The blind and visually-impaired (BVI) community is more often than not pigeon-holed and hindered by invisible barriers when it comes to education, employment and life choices. These are typically the outcome of low expectations from people who have a poor understanding of the abilities of the blind. Ride for Sight was conceived to be an avenue for the BVI community to champion for their right to expect and are expected to achieve success. Our hope is that this event will promote the idea that we can and should expect our BVI friends to achieve their fullest potential in life.  .  

The previous five Ride for Sight events were very successful and attracted between 800-1200 participants each time the event was held. The feedback on the event was so encouraging among all the participants, sponsors and other stakeholder that we decided the event would be held annually. Another important benefit from Ride For Sight was that many volunteers signed up as pilots and marshals for our bi-monthly cycling outings as well.

When we started planning for RFS2016, we were very confident that despite the economic slowdown, we would be able to attract the numbers. We promoted this vigorously event to various cycling groups, corporate companies and as well as individuals as a whole in hopes to increase participation numbers.

In late January, we discovered that there is another cycling event to celebrate “Earth Hour Charity Ride” to be held on 19th March 2016, just one month earlier than our event. What is even more devastating for us is that the registration fee only 1/5 that of ours and the organizer of the “Earth Hour” ride named us as the sole beneficiary of the funds raised from the event. Imagine our consternation when we were hit with this news! We have been deep in the preparation of our very own ride scheduled for 10th April 2016 and this will definitely have a negative impact on our participant numbers. Sure enough, there was a sharp decline in participation numbers for Ride For Sight 2016 with only 200 registered cyclist.

This experience taught us that we should never take things for granted and that we should check more carefully to avoid clashing with another event. More importantly, we realised