Breaking The Barrier

Have you ever wonder how life would be for you if you are armless? Meet Zhariff Afandi an extraordinary person who has achieved so many things despite being armless. Zhariff Afandi, a psychology graduate from Griffith University, Australia who also took Bachelor of Arts, majoring in Sociology in KDU College has been involved in so many humanitarian aid and charity work. He has become such an inspirational person as well as a public figure at such an early age. Zhariff  organized a volunteering programme when Acheh was hit by tsunami in 2004 and he also organized The Burma Blaster Sound in 2007 to raise funds as Burma was hit by the Cyclone Nagris.

Zhariff Afandi, the founder of The Zhariff Initiative (TZI) has organized a series of programme called “Breaking The Barrier” tour. This event took place in KDU University College, Damansara Jaya main campus on the 24^th April 2012. TZI initiated this programme to reach out to the youths to open up their mind to the vast possibilities in life. According to Zhariff, what encouraged him to organize this tour is that he always wanted to inspire people especially students to not be afraid in starting something out of their passion. 

“I felt angry and  frustrated when people feel that they are worthless or hopeless. The fact that we, as human beings  decide to choose on being limited in our own beliefs. What frustrates me more is when people are not willing to explore solutions and things that they can,” said Zhariff Afandi.

Zhariff Afandi

Being armless does not stop Zhariff from doing adventurous activities such horse riding, deep caving, body boarding and others, instead he uses his limitations to explore himself and go beyond the possibilities.  Besides sharing session between Zhariff and the students, he invited a few of his celebrity friends to share their stories on how they break their barrier to achieve their dream, such as Altimet, Liyana Fizi, Karmal and Eddy Lim.

Moreover, there were also other activities such as graffiti demonstration by THEY Graffiti artiste, flash mob performance by students of School of Hospitality, Tourism and Culinary Arts as well as Post Secret Malaysia and One Million Happy Faces also did a campaign in KDU University College. Altimet and Karmal performed a few songs to liven up the event.  Zhariff hopes that from this tour youths will understand the meaning of breaking the barrier and take action about it so that they will experience and see how far they can accomplish.

Students of KDU University College