Get to Know Everything About MyBIM in Malaysia!

Congratulation to Deaf group who involved in the project MyBIM! Please watch the youtube below; "Opening launch of Malaysian Sign Language and Deaf Studies Association held at MAB Complex, Kuala Lumpur on Sunday, 16 March 2014"


A group of Deaf people with excellent education and/or long experience in Deaf Community has gathered and discussed to establish a new association which will employ different methods in bringing new development to Deaf Community in Malaysia. This association does not provide what the current Deaf associations do, i.e. providing BIM interpreting service, sign language courses, counselling on employment issues, and workshops on general knowledge. It is not a necessary to have a new association with same function with other associations.

Photo group together with Guest of Honours and MyBIM Pro Tem Committee Members.
Opening Ceremony MyBIM and first Annual General Meeting was held at MAB Complex, Kuala Lumpur on Sunday, 16 March 2014.

The new association would focus mainly on the knowledge building on Deaf people, not just their language but their culture, history, identity, education, sport, technology, socioeconomic, art, deafhood (the process of being Deaf) and many more through research, article writing, journal publication, training and courses. It may enable Deaf people become more powerful with new knowledge and understand ourselves.

No offence and I feel it is important to create new knowledge so that the Deaf Community can become stronger and powerful. They would be able to use new knowledge to protect their rights as Deaf in the mainstream society, especially education and employment. Knowledge is power!

Congratulations to MyBIM Executive Committee for 2014-2016 and new members
for first MyBIM Annual General Meeting!

Therefore, this association is a very unique association with different goals. It is important to have different associations with different goals so that each of them could contribute differently towards the development of the Deaf Community. This association is known as “Malaysian Sign Language and Deaf Studies Association” and in Bahasa Malaysia, it is “Persatuan Bahasa Isyarat Malaysia dan Pengajian Pekak”. We also could call it as MyBIM, please note that the only lowercase is “y”. Sign name for this MyBIM is not invented yet.

Here, I would like to clarify about the shortened term “MyBIM” since I often came to a misunderstanding that people assume it is another language than BIM, which is not true. Our language remains BIM (Bahasa Isyarat Malaysia or Malaysian Sign Language). MyBIM is just a reference we use to address the association. Please remember that and please explain to your friends about the difference between BIM and MyBIM.

Currently MyBIM membership is open to all people, hearing or deaf or with different disability, who would really like to contribute to the development of the Community.

MyBIM is not limited to Deaf people only. There are three types of memberships –

1. individual members who have vote rights and can be part of executive committee in next general meeting,
2. associate members who does not meet individual membership requirement, or prefer to stay as associate members who don’t have vote rights and can not be part of executive committee in next general meeting.
3. Corporate members who support the goals of the association.

For those who want to be individual members, according to the MyBIM’s constitution, they would need to go through interview sessions or background screening to ensure they have enough quality to keep the association run smoothly, for the sake of the Deaf Community’s future.

Both Individual and Associate Members are welcome to work close with us in certain research projects. MyBIM definitely needs our support, manpower, intelligence, and highly skills.

Any idea or suggestion, please drop a message to MyBIMcomm@gmail.com, or go to www.facebook.com/MyBIM.

Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MyBIM1

Source information and images by MyBIM facebook and http://deafabc.blogspot.com/