Category: Deaf

People and activities in the Cambodian deaf world

Birthday Surprise

This afternoon I was surprised when most of the staff working in our new building appeared in my office with a birthday “cake” made of sliced fruit. I was out of the office much of yesterday, my birthday, so they rescheduled for today, unbeknownst to me. A wonderful bunch. The two women on the left (next to me) and the two men on the far right are deaf.

Caritas Visitors

Today a team of management from Caritas Australia and Caritas Cambodia came to visit the Maryknoll Deaf Development Programme. Nou Chanthea (2L) is Caritas Australia’s Asia Manager based in Sydney.

Cleaning Day

DDP has moved its Phnom Penh office from a larger office building to a smaller new building in the same compound, a cost-cutting move. But before leaving the old grounds, we had a general cleanup of the yard and the old building with all the staff participating.

Some broken and unusable tables and other pieces of furniture were gathered to be hauled away to a dump.
We found some old student desks behind a building at the rear of the property. Why the old desks were saved in the first place really isn’t clear but they’re gone now.
After a couple hours work, it was time for a break.
Although we had separated items to be disposed of into two piles, one pile for the landfill and the other to be recycled, plans were changed when the landlord unexpectedly showed up and asked us to throw all the landfill-destined materials into the fish pond which he wants to fill up.

Very Welcome Visitors!

Today I had a wonderful visit from three new friends who share a common background with me. During part of the time I was in Hong Kong, they were in Macau, working with the Lutheran School for the Deaf, and we have many friends in common. (L-R: Mrs. and Mr. Bush, Charlie, Thomas Dunseth)

Moving in…

Most of the staff were off from work today, making use of their remaining days of annual leave, but students from our barber shop came to help the maintenance man in our new building. Probably a whiteboard is going on that wall.

Not so fast….

We moved a lot of office furniture and boxes to our new building but we have been slow in unpacking and setting up the new office configurations. Mostly that is due to moving at the end of the year when a lot of staff are taking days off, using their annual leave.

Preparing to move

We are moving our office from one building on our compound to another building and it has been a slow and complicated process. There have been delays getting the new building ready and it has taken a lot of time to empty cabinets and pack materials for the short journey.

Here the sign language department prepares materials for the move which is planned by the end of the month.

Inclusive Employment Workshop

We had a workshop today to discuss and promote inclusive employment for people with disabilities. It was quite good, much better than what I usually expect from such workshops. Soknym, our DDP director, and I attended to give more voice to the deaf community.

Representatives from industry, especially the garment manufacturers, from the Ministry of Labor, and from NGOs attended.
We provided a sign language interpreter (seated, grey blouse) for two young deaf men who attended.
Later one of the deaf men reported from one of the six discussion groups that were the last activity of the afternoon.

Graduation Day

Today was graduation day at the Maryknoll Deaf Development Programme. We had students finishing Year 2 of our Education Project and other students finishing their work in the Job Training Project. Here DDP director Sau Soknym speaks to all the students before handing out certificates.