A 12-year-old girl has spent time during the lockdown looking at TikTok videos and has been making packages for elderly care-home residents with help from her mum. Marium Ahmad has autism and fighting chronic fatigue and likes staying in at home during the coronavirus pandemic.
As part of her project Awetisome.life, Marium fundraises, and has put together care packages. She donates gifts to autistic children, as well as to elderly care-home residents.
Autism can affect people's social interactions. Defining her condition in an interview with the BBC Asian Network, she said,
"Autism is basically a condition where there are some things that you don't like. It can be sensory stuff, like noises or lights, it can be anything. Some things just trigger you and you don't like them. It makes me anxious.”
According to the National Autistic Society there are 700,000 autistic people in the UK. There is no definite data indicating the percentage of Autistic children from BAME backgrounds. A spokesperson for the organisation said,
"If you're autistic, small changes and unexpected events can trigger intense anxiety. So the scale and pace of change over the past three months has been incredibly hard.
"Now we've started easing the lockdown and adjusting to the new rules, different anxieties will be creeping in.
Marium’s mum Zainab, has been home-schooling her for the length of the lockdown. But she says that it has made her worse.
"With Marium's autism and chronic fatigue, rest is good... but she's out of practice in facing the world with outings... so it's literally [going to be] like teaching her how to ride a bike from scratch."
They both say the sense of community that comes with getting involved with volunteering opportunities locally in Wimbledon, south London, has been a big positive of lockdown.
