Introduction

I was a late speaker. I didn’t know how to speak till I was two and a half. My mom was really worried I wouldn’t be able to speak. Yet, ever since I did, I’m pretty sure my mom has regretted it, perhaps anybody who knows me has for that matter—I have never been able to shut up.

Well here is my chance for a change as an university student: to stop talkin’ about a revolution as Tracy Chapman would put it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2wneBVssPc and to start listening to those who are in need. From 20 Feb to 26 Feb, I will not be speaking for a week, communicating only with a notepad to raise money for Sparks, a charity that funds medical research for children.

In addition to not speaking, I will be trekking for eleven days to Mount Everst Base Camp at an altitude of 5,360 meters this September. The fundraising target is 2500 pounds. The entire project is done under Student Adventures Everest Base Camp Trek http://studentadventures.co.uk/adventures/everest_base_camp_trek.

What I Will Be Doing?

1.      I am not going to speak for a week and will be carrying a notepad around to communicate.

2.      To demonstrate my determination, if I accidentally spit out a word or two (even if was tricked into doing so), I would have to do ten push-ups for every word I utter on the spot. My friends would gladly make sure of that.

3.      At the end of each day, I will upload photos of the things I have written down on the notepad that day and update on the number of push-ups I’ve done.

 How You Can Help?

1.      Share this fundraising page and the fundraising website with your family, friends, and basically anybody who you think can help with the cause. Share it on your facebook page and like this page. Tell them about this Calvin guy who needs to talk less. As a student I understand how finance can be a problem, please share the page so people who actually have the money can help with the cause.

2.      If you happen to have 3, 5, 10 pounds to spare this week, within your weekly budget, any amount really, you can pay through this fundraising website. The money will go straight to the charity.

Motivation

In November 2010, I volunteered at New Hope Foundation, a foster home in Beijing for physically handicapped children around the country. It was a truly powerful experience. I grew close to the children during my stay there, and promised myself to help them in perhaps a more substantial way in the coming future. When my friend told me about Student Adventures and I realized that the charity that I would be fundraising was involved in medical research for children, I saw the opportunity to honour the promise I made to myself three years ago, and contribute to the cause of children medical research.

At New Hope, most of these children were abandoned due to birth defects that the parents either discriminated against, or did not have sufficient funding to treat. Robin and his wife Joyce founded New Hope in 2000 to provide care and medical treatment for these children. Lives are saved and deformities that would affect the children for life are treated, and all these are made possible by existing medical technology. The work Sparks is involved in is precisely funding research that advances medical technology to treat more children in the UK and in the world alike.

During my time at New Hope, there was a room upstairs that I was not permitted to enter. It is a room for terminally ill children that current medical technology is still incapable of treating and all that could be done is palliative treatment. It is like a black cloud that looms in the background of the otherwise bright and hopeful foster home. There are still many birth defects that require the persistent effort of medical research.

On one of the walls of the foster home writes the Starfish Story by Loren Eisley (See Gallery). The medical research Sparks is involved in not only made a difference to one, but also to all those that are to come.