Category: Deaf

This week a deaf sports competition is going on in Ufa, Russia, and a football team from Cambodia is participating. It is the first time a Cambodian deaf team has been in a major international competition. It is significant also because the deaf people themselves organized their application to play. It is not a DDP-sponsored activity. Three of the DDP staff went along as interpreters and support staff.

[To be continued]

10 days after offering a training program to deaf people on how to make and serve coffee in a business, the good people of Boncafé came back to DDP to donate 15 boxes of Oatside, an oatmilk that is especially suited for use in coffee. Never heard of oatmilk? I never had but it’s for real! Thank you, Boncafé!

The next two weeks, starting July 23, will see the competitions of the Asian Deaf Games, an every-four-year event that brings together deaf athletes from the various Asian countries. This will be the first time Cambodian deaf boys participate. For this first participation, our deaf youth will only enter the football competition. Here two of the footballers pick up their newly arrived uniform shirts.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is the idea that a company should play a positive role in the community and consider the environmental and social impact of business decisions. (Business Development Bank of Canada)

Boncafe in Phnom Penh has taken CSR seriously and approached the Maryknoll Deaf Development Programme about training deaf people how to make coffee. DDP thought that was a wonderful idea!

The training at DDP was in two sessions on two different days, one day for deaf people from Kampong Cham Province and the second day for learners from Phnom Penh. Here Pakheday, the trainer, explains some of the basics of making good coffee.

Here he explains the hardware on the commercial coffee making machine. The goal of the training was to provide a marketable skill that the deaf people can use to set up their own businesses.

The training was hands-on and each student made one of the coffee varieties. The DDP staff suffered caffeine overload from drinking so many of the demonstration coffees!

Certificates were presented at the end of the day of training. Now the DDP Job Training Project staff will follow up with the trainees to see if they are able to capitalize on what they have learned.

On the third morning, without the students, the DDP staff made videos of all the coffee varieties and the processes for making them. The videos can be used for review and reinforcement of what was learned.

Thank you, Boncafe!

Bon Café is a socially-conscious business supplying hardware and coffee and accessories to the thousands of coffee shops in Phnom Penh. They have volunteered to teach coffee-making skills to interested deaf people who may be able to use that to create an employment opportunity. Today they had the first training session. Ten deaf persons learned about coffee making and Bon Café staff learned what a challenge it is to work with deaf people with sign language. More power to Bon Café!

The meeting was a good time for learning and discussing but also a great time for getting together as brothers and sisters.

Every year DDP tries to have an all-staff meeting away from the office to give the staff a chance to have fun together in addition to receiving updates and information about changes. In the past we usually went away for two or three nights, but this year, because of the budget cuts, we had a one-day meeting at a resort center near Phnom Penh. The meeting was quite good. Here Op Siphal, the Maryknoll office manager, explains the workings of the National Social Security Fund while Sreynuch interprets in sign language.