In 2016, a group of medical students from Queen's University Belfast set up a SKIP branch in Belfast to help Perkata, a school for children with learning disabilities based in Kuching, Malaysia, with the hope of protecting their rights, tackle social stigma and improve their health and nutrition.

In 2017, we went on a summer project to gather data about the school, the parents and the children and more specifically the existing health and nutrition of these children. Some of the problems we found include picky eating habits, uncertainty about calorie intake, lack of fruits and vegetables in their diet and physical inactivity. To tackle these, we introduced a logbook to track the children's daily diet whilst running educational sessions for parents and teachers.

This summer (2018), we plan to expand our intervention on health and nutrition after receiving extremely positive feedback from both parents and teachers as well as to explore the existing social stigma of these children that still exists within the local community. The school educates and supports these children until the age of 18, at which they are believed to be independent and fully able to support themselves. This may be true for a few months, after which most of them, unfortunately, become unemployed or do not receive further education due to the presumption by employers or members of the community that these children are profoundly disabled and thus, considered a liability.

To support and fund our intervention, I will be running the Belfast marathon alongside with some of the SKIP volunteers. If you would like more information, please do not hesitate to contact me or SKIP Belfast at belfast@skipkids.org.uk or simply visit our official website at https://skipkids.org.uk/. Your kind generosity will be tremendously appreciated!!