Day 4
Today was the actual celebration for the 50th anniversary of the old Canossa School for the Deaf.





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People and activities in the Cambodian deaf world
Today was the actual celebration for the 50th anniversary of the old Canossa School for the Deaf.
Day 2 was spent mostly in the room where I am staying, catching up on some work. Then on Day 3, December 29th, I went to Macau to see the Catholic deaf people there.
Earlier in December I went to Hong Kong for the 30th anniversary of the pastoral center for people with disabilities that I helped to start. Yesterday I returned to Hong Kong for the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Canossa School for the Deaf. That celebration will be on December 30th.
I took the airport bus into town and when I got off, two really good friends were there to meet me–Peggy and Angel. First we went to the apartment I am using this trip–courtesy of another really good friend, Judy in Taiwan.
Then we went to a phone shop to get a Hong Kong SIM card installed in my phone. That took an hour! After that we ate a delicious meal in a nearby restaurant.
After eating we walked to a grocery store in the Wanchai area, to get something for my breakfast in the morning. Our travel took us past a public area beautifully decorated with Christmas lights and scenes.
After the students had eaten and it started to get dark, the musicians took the stage. There were three music groups who performed for 2+ hours.
Musica Felice held their most recent concert–an event to benefit the Deaf Development Programme–at Exchange Square Mall in Phnom Penh, a change of venue from the usual 5-star hotel setting. It was quite a new experience for our deaf students in various ways.
Yesterday Musica Felice held a benefit concert at Exchange Square in Phnom Penh to help the Caritas Deaf Development Programme. In October DDP also benefited from a previous Musica Felice concert and this week Miwako Fujiwara presented the proceeds from that event. Thank you, Miwako! Thank you, Musica Felice!
Today Musica Felice, under the direction of Ms. Miwako Fujiwara, organized an outdoor benefit concert at Exchange Square Mall in Phnom Penh, with the Deaf Development Programme as the beneficiary. It turned out to be quite an evening and at one point, as Sea Wolf, one of the premier bands of Cambodia was playing a song, a group of our deaf youth spontaneously ran up on to the stage to dance with them.
This is the 75th year since the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights was promulgated and this evening the local Office of the High Commission on Human Rights had a reception at a big hotel. Our Deaf Development Programme works a lot with OHCHR (I have a meeting with them at 9:00 tomorrow morning) and I was invited.
It was quite a production and a nice meal at the end. It was good to note some of the achievements in the last 75 years but disheartening to see how little we have progressed. There’s still much to do. [The sign language interpreter on the right of the stage is one of my staff.]
December 4 was the anniversary celebration for the pastoral center in Homantin for people with disabilities. Because the center is not so large, the mass and dinner were held at a high school.