Social enterprise We Tic on Monday released a set of animated stickers for the Line messaging app to raise awareness about Tourette’s syndrome in children.
Landseed Hospital pediatrician Hsueh Chang-wei (薛常威), who also manages the enterprise, said We Tic was established in June to help families struggling with the neurological disorder.
The enterprise is not a foundation and does not accept donations, he said, adding that it needs to earn revenue to stay afloat.
Photo: Lee Jung-ping, Taipei Times
About one in 200 children in Taiwan have Tourette’s — a chronic disorder that develops in childhood, with symptoms waxing and waning throughout the patient’s life — he said.
The condition is characterized by involuntary tics, which might cause difficulty and frustration for people when interacting with others, he said.
The involuntary movements include shrugging, blinking, trembling and erratic movements, he said.
The enterprise drew inspiration from these movements and other characteristics associated with the condition to create the 24 animated stickers, he said.
For example, one of the stickers reads: “Do not feed,” as children with Tourette’s cannot consume certain foods, such as caffeinated drinks and chocolate, Hsueh said.
Another sticker reads: “Move together,” as children with Tourette’s are energetic and love to move around, he said.
Hopefully the stickers will help overcome the stereotypes and discrimination against people with the condition, he added.
The enterprise is also developing masks that muffle involuntary sounds and is visiting schools to talk to teachers and students about Tourette’s, Hsueh said, adding that he hopes the enterprise’s successes will inspire similar ventures around the world.
We Tic’s stickers were inspired by stickers created for the Line messaging app from the drawings of a 10-year-old girl who died of heart disease last month, which have become the app’s best-selling user-created stickers, he said.
After Chi-chi (綺綺), who was born with congenital heart disease, passed away during surgery, her parents submitted her drawings of dinosaurs to be used as stickers.
They said they would donate the earnings from their sales to the Cardiac Children’s Foundation Taiwan.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
Taiwanese singer Jay Chou (周杰倫) plans to take to the courts of the Australian Open for the first time as a competitor in the high-stakes 1 Point Slam. The Australian Open yesterday afternoon announced the news on its official Instagram account, welcoming Chou — who celebrates his 47th birthday on Sunday — to the star-studded lineup of the tournament’s signature warm-up event. “From being the King of Mandarin Pop filling stadiums with his music to being Kato from The Green Hornet and now shifting focus to being a dedicated tennis player — welcome @jaychou to the 1 Point Slam and #AusOpen,” the
RSS