DDP’s New Home—the Planning Process

We started talking about moving the Maryknoll Deaf Development Programme to the site of the Maryknoll Seedling of Hope program when it closed at the end of December, 2018, and we made our first contacts with the landlord in September, visiting the site with him.

Things worked out well and in November we started visiting the Seedling site to make actual plans how to use the different buildings.

Our DDP management team met with the landlord and his wife several times, and as we walked around we asked how they would feel about various ideas for changes we had.
A building at one end of a large lot adjoined to the office building land has six rooms that are quite spacious and we decided to convert them into dorm rooms in a hostel.
Sokly, our co-director, is a farm boy at heart and really wanted to preserve as much of the garden area of the land as we can, even though we envisioned putting up some new buildings there also.
At the other end of the lot, opposite the six rooms for dorms, was a somewhat decrepit storage building and we anticipated converting that to a kitchen and dining area for the students who would live at this new center.