Meet Philip Choy. Hearing-impaired himself, he has nevertheless chosen to volunteer his time to the Singapore Association for the Deaf. He lends his skills as a network administrator by running the Cyberlab, and also contributes in other ways such as conducting sign language courses. His story is a shining example of the many ways everybody can contribute. Here it is, in his own words.

Hi! I am Philip Choy. I work as a network administrator in NTUC Income. It has been three years. I used to be very interested in any thing related to computer. And nowadays technology has advanced so fast that my interest has diversified.

I volunteer in the Singapore Association for the Deaf (SADeaf) as Chairman of Cyberlab (a computer club run solely by volunteers). I also volunteer as a sign language instructor, and as member of the Executive Council, the International Day of the Deaf Working Group, and used to be in the Sports and Recreation Committee of the Deaf.

In late 1996, together with the Enable 2000 team, we helped to set up the Rainbow network in SADeaf. Thereafter, I help to administrate and maintain the server. I also attend to SADeaf's distress calls on their computer problems. This is usually during lunch break or after work.

A senior person, whom I met in Hwa Chong Junior College while attending a computer camp for secondary school students in 1984, had encouraged me to join SADeaf. In 1995, I did and helped the Enable 2000 team laid and set up the SADeaf's Computer network, christened Rainbow. The team of volunteers also comprising of people from the tertiary institutions like National University of Singapore and Temasek Polytechnic were Dr Tan Tin Wee, Mr Lim Kin Chew, Mr Poh Yew Tiong, Mr Lim Fung, some others and myself. My volunteer service has actually ended up with me as the unofficial troubleshooter for all SADeaf's network problem.

It would be interesting to note that Mr Poh Yew Tiong, who himself is also a hearing impaired, is a hard driver and always pushes his ideas into reality. So, any hearing-impaired or disabled person can do any thing constructive and useful for the community. If anyone can contribute, they would be the most welcomed to help up in any way at SADeaf.

At Cyberlab, we conduct computer courses and it is open to all registered clients of SADeaf. We maintain the course fees to as affordable as possible. We conduct courses in SADeaf and any institutions such as Temasek Polytechnic, Singapore Polytechnic, Informatics, Comat, Denium, and others, for hearing-impaired students. We also open Cyberlab on Sunday for the hearing-impaired people to use computers to surf the broadband Internet free of charge.

We have two tiers of computer training. We provide hearing-impaired instructors for the computer illiterate or lower educated hearing-impaired. This way, they can understand the instructions better as the instructors use sign language while they are teaching. We get qualified hearing people to conduct courses for computer literate hearing-impaired. This way, it would be more cost effective. Hearing-impaired people do not come forward to volunteer their services as they could not do much even for themselves. It is also due to various reasons such as deaf politics, finance, family commitments, lack of time, and the reluctance to attend long meetings. I do not know how to encourage hearing-impaired to come forward to volunteer. All I can do is only to highlight the benefits of SADeaf. Hopefully, this will draw more hearing-impaired and that they will not shy away.