Non-profit organisation Ability Hub SA hosted a unique deaf awareness campaign in the form of a cooking competition between people with hearing disabilities and those with hearing ability.
The cooking competition was held at Ditsong Museum in Silverton, Tshwane this past Sunday.
Ability Hub SA, which was founded by Zena Forbes and her husband Ariel Forbes, is a non-profit organisation that caters for people with different kinds of disabilities and this time the focus was to raise deaf awareness in the community, in line with Deaf Awareness Month.
Three teams took part in the cooking competition, and they comprised of one team with both contestants being of hearing disability, the second team with both contestants being of hearing ability and the third team being of one person being of hearing ability while the other was of hearing disability.
The competition was won by a team comprising both people of hearing ability.
The contestants were Ida and David Nkosi from Atteridgeville, Tamar Jaffer and Nadia Achmed from Queenswood, as well as Sonika and Zaneka Kruger from Meyerspark.
Tamar Jaffer and Nadia Achmed, both of whom are of hearing ability, won the competition and as a winning prize they got a 30-minute photography session, and we’re pampered with a 60-minute full body massage.
The two losing teams received flowers as consolation prizes.
Winners Tamar Jaffer and Nadia Achmad admitted that the competition was tough as the food cooked by the other teams were also delicious and they described the while event as amazing experience wherein they would like to participate again in the future.
“My vssions of the event is that everything went well and I am in awe because our organisation Ability Hub SA is only a month old and this was the first time we hosted an event to celebrate deaf awareness, which is something that is close to my heart and basically everything was sponsored from the tables, chairs, the entrance fee to the museum, guest stoves and the deaf people and hearing people came together, and the hearing people wanted to learn how to use sign language and it was not so much about winning the competition but about having fun,” said organiser if the event Zena Forbes, who is also CEO of Ability Hub SA.
She said the next competition of this kind would be held at a school for the deaf children where they will mix the crowd with both hearing and deaf people.
“We want to bridge the gap the gap between hearing and deaf people and show that the only difference between deaf and hearing people is that though they can’t hear but can do exactly everything we can do, they are funny like us if one would just get to know a deaf person and I am looking forward to getting support from the community and the business sector so that this event can be hosted on a bugger scale and more frequently,” said Forbes.
The slogan of the competition was: “Cooking Up Awareness: Stirring Conversations, Bridging Deaf and Hearing World’s.”