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8th Grade Indigo Workshop Service Learning Group Activity

October 28, 2019

On October 26th, 2019, eighth graders visited the Indigo workshop and enjoyed a few hours with the members there. Indigo Workshop is a creative program for autistic adults that was created almost 10 years ago by a lady from Taiwan.

Every day, the members are brought into the workshop and are taught to make soap among many other artistic crafts. Learning these time-consuming, but rewarding skills is a type of therapy for them. Soap, for example, requires 2 whole hours of hand mixing to incorporate all the ingredients together, a few hours of pouring the liquid into molds, 2 months to wait for the soap to dry, and then a few more days for packaging the soap bars. Not only do they develop the dexterity to make crafts by themselves, but they also learn lessons such as patience and persistence along the way.

Autistic adults view the world from a very precise and passionate perspective. The Indigo Workshop is decorated with an assortment of intricate, abstract art pieces that showcase their fervent passion for art. They were so eager to talk to us and do activities with us, which put genuine smiles on all of our faces.

We also had a little origami folding session where we closed our eyes and followed vague instructions while making origami. Needless to say, we all got very different products. We tried a second time and were allowed to ask questions. This time, we got very similar results. What we learned from this activity was that doing things alone is difficult and that help from others is needed to succeed.

Afterward, we did another folding exercise: folding box lids. While many of the eighth graders found it relatively hard to complete the task, the adults could fold them easily and finished folding about twice as fast. They were also very willing to teach us how to fold while having conversations with us. To finish, we sang songs together. Not only were their voices unique and beautiful, but their obvious passion for so many things was even more inspiring.

After spending time with these amazing adults, we felt a special bond of happiness and friendship. We look forward to visiting them again in future.

Written by Melody Supervised by Mr. Key , Ms. Gu Pictures by Ms. Zhang