THE St Nicholas Home awarded seven of its blind and visually impaired (BVI) trainees who achieved outstanding results in the 2017 STPM and SPM examinations with respective scholarships of RM500 and RM300.

The home’s director Datuk Dr Sharom Ahmat said although it was a small token, it served as an acknowledgement of the hardwork that the trainees had put in to obtain the results.

A total of RM2,300 was given to the seven.

Thew Ming Soon, 20, who was the only STPM candidate out of the seven trainees, scored a CGPA of 3.67 studying at Maktab Sultan Abu Bakar in Johor.

“One of the biggest hurdles that I faced in Form 6 was a lack of studying materials during my first two semesters.

“I had to rely on what I could find online and powerpoint slides that my classmates could share with me.

“Thankfully, St Nicholas helped me get the braille textbooks that I needed,” said the student who was blind due to complications from a premature birth.

“Moving forward, I plan to enrol in a degree for special needs education so that I may someday teach either music or history.

“While waiting for approval, I am interning as an assistant instructor for an IT class at the home,” he said, adding that he himself was a trainee back in 2014.

Likewise, S. Rishan Ponraj, 17, who scored 7As out of nine subjects in his SPM at SMPK Setapak, shared similar obstacles on his road to success.

“Not many people know this but mathematics is a challenging subject for BVI students like me who have a hard time grasping the diagrams used for geometry.

“Right now I am considering either a diploma in English at Universiti Malaya or a TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language) course at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia as I plan to be an English lecturer,” said Rishan, who was blind since birth due to cataracts and glaucoma.

He added that in future he wished to be a part-time music teacher, having already learnt to play the guitar.