Malek Suleiman…a Syrian youth with visual disability breaks the stereotype about the blind

The personal and societal challenges as well as the successes that the Syrian youth Malek Suleiman lived through showed the ability of people with visual disabilities to acquire skills many believe that gaining them needs sight.

Malek created the “Braille team” to train blind people on skills that help them enter the labor market.

In a statement to SANA, Malik said that he has suffered from a disease called “Stargardt” and started to lose his vision when he is adult. He accepted his illness and worked hard to adapt to his situation by learning many skills, such as playing sports and practicing drawing with passion until he became a professional in graphic design.

This insistence led Malik to a new ambition, which is making content and delivering it via social media, specifically the YouTube platform. That’s why he learned photography, montage and audio recording. Through this project, Malik applied for the “Next Arab Millionaire” scholarship from the UAE, which supports content makers, and he received it as he was the only blind among nearly 20 thousand healthy people who applied for the scholarship from the Arab world. He then began to develop the cultural content he offers on the YouTube channel, which has nearly 5 million views.

Malik created the “braille team” to integrate and train blind people so that they could enter the content making job market so that his personal experience would be their biggest motivation, and to emphasize that blind people can do all the work done by healthy people, adding a little effort, training and some technology.

Malik Suleiman is studying business administration and psychology at Damascus University.

Amal Farhat