Category: Deaf

People and activities in the Cambodian deaf world

Deaf Week Activities

Crazy Hair Day

The Maryknoll Deaf Development Programme started celebrating Deaf Week today. Our team has proposed a different game or activity for each day for all the students and staff based at our Phnom Penh office. Today was crazy hair day.

A couple of the guys got into the spirit at our Monday morning staff meeting.
Two of our interpreters were not to be outdone, but then they had more to work with. And then there are others who had almost nothing to work with!

Lights out…

Today our power was off at the Deaf Development Programme so our students in the Education Project met outside on the porch till the electricity came back on about 2:00 PM.

Field Trip Follow-up

Last Friday the students in DDP’s Education Project went on a field trip to the National Museum in Phnom Penh. Today they had a follow-up activity to help them better understand and retain what they saw and learned there.

Another Farewell…

Covid-19 has changed the world so much–our plans, our hopes and dreams, the way we work, the way we do business, and–at DDP—our plan for the future. Because of Covid, we had to suspend many of our projects and activities for almost two years, but the most painful effect of Covid was needing to reduce our staff because our funding was cut back.

The last day of June we had a gathering for our staff in Phnom Penh where eight of our colleagues were terminated. It was a simple event, just a lunch together, but it gave us an opportunity to say and show we care about each other.

At the start, Soknym, our program manager, and Charlie spoke to all the staff about the need to reduce our numbers because of lack of money.
Then we had lunch together.
Finally staff were given the opportunity to talk about the experience of all the changes and the terminations.

Deaf Awareness

Perhaps the worst aspect of deafness is not the inability to hear. Deaf people say they can overcome that with hearing aids, cochlear implants and other technology, and can still communicate using sign language, gestures, writing notes, lip reading, and such simple things as acting out an idea or pointing to something.

For many, many deaf people the worst part of deafness is isolation. They are excluded from all that is going on around them because they do not share a common language with their society.

Here in Cambodia our deaf students do not know sign language when they come to us and their families almost never learn sign language. When our students are at home with their hearing parents and brothers and sisters, they are isolated. They may be in the same house, may eat together, but the deaf person has no communication.

Many young deaf people come to us at age 19-23 and they have never spoken to a human being in any language. All the things hearing children learn from hearing parents as they grow up, the deaf students have missed.

That is why it is so important for more hearing people to learn sign language. Then when they encounter deaf people at work or in a group or socially or just on the street, they can communicate and can include the deaf person in what is happening.

That is why the Deaf Development Programme teaches regular sign language classes.

The graduation ceremony this week for the latest class of beginner sign language students.

Sign language class graduation

The Sign Language Project of the Deaf Development Programme teaches Cambodian Sign Language to interested groups throughout the year. This week we had a combined graduation for new signers from four different NGOs serving people with disabilities. I gave a short talk explaining the importance of increasing the number of hearing people able to use sign language.