Shoppers, doctors, volunteers and autistic children along with their families attended the event, held to mark the Autism Awareness Month.
Nada Nazer, mother of an autistic child and founder of a support group for mothers with autistic children, asked the Young Initiative Group (YIG) to help her inform people about the condition in Saudi Arabia after noticing awareness was low.
“We initially chose to host the event in Red Sea Mall to involve people who visit there on the weekend as we wanted to guarantee maximum exposure,” said Maha Taher, founder of YIG.
“We have been preparing for this event for a while because we wanted autistic children to go out and have fun like normal children along with their families and other autistic kids,” she added.
“This whole event is about acceptance, because most of those children are not accepted in our society. People think they are weird and haunted. However, those who think that are just unaware of this condition and we wanted to educate them about it,” said Taher.
The four-hour event included a puppet show, face painting, arts and craft and an awareness table.
At the event the volunteers, mothers and autistic children formed a human ribbon, screamed the word “autism” and released a huge number of yellow balloons to show their support for the initiative.
“We have already launched events for different causes and now we are focusing on autism. We are going to annually mark this day by hosting an event for everyone to join and enjoy,” said Taher.
