Deaf Day at DDP

Every year we celebrate a Deaf Week as part of the international celebration of deaf people around the world. We will have several different events, but our main focus is one Deaf Day, on a weekend, when we can invite all deaf people to come to our center for food and games and just enjoying being together.

Some of our group have some residual hearing–they might be hard-of-hearing rather than profoundly deaf–and there is always a group that likes to get together and dance in a traditional Khmer style which lends itself well to a group that cannot hear all the music
Our DDP Deaf Community Center staff always plan many simple games that the deaf people really enjoy, like this one, where a ping pong ball is blown across the tops of cups of water to fall into the paper cup on the right.
For many of the deaf participants, the greatest attraction of Deaf Day is the opportunity to be with friends they have not seen for a long time and just talk about what is going on.
Another game was the challenge of stacking fifteen plastic cups into a pyramid. For each success in a game, the participants score sheet was stamped and with a certain number of stamps, they were able to claim prizes.
One area of the grounds provided a variety of different kinds of foods prepared by deaf people. In the foreground are barbecued chicken feet.
And then there were always groups of friends talking about their lives and their work.