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People and activities in the Cambodian deaf world
The Church of Cambodia is having a vocations camp this week, bringing together 300 youth from all over the kingdom to discuss what it means to be a Catholic Christian and to reflect on the idea of a vocation of service as a sister or brother or priest. Today different small groups visited various organizations to learn about the work of the Catholic Church in Cambodia. This group came to the Deaf Development Programme where I talked to them about deaf ministry.
This is our DDP co-director, Keat Sokly, at the World Federation of the Deaf conference in Paris, France today. He and I had planned to go together but I found the trip would cost me $2,500-$3,000 and I just couldn’t afford that. Sokly was able to be included in a budget with one of our partner groups. These WFD conferences are every four years and are really valuable for the ideas shared there and the people you meet.
Our new office for the Maryknoll Deaf Development Programme is much an improvement on our old location. It is notable for the increased space we have and the different uses it makes possible. And it is noteworthy, too, for the accumulation of stone animals the landlord deposited around the grounds when he first developed his property. Here are SOME of them!
Ellie (L) and Zoe are two students from Notre Dame University in the United States. They are in Cambodia with Maryknoll for a summer program for two months and will spend part of their time at the Deaf Development Programme.
Here they learn Cambodian Sign Language with two of the DDP sign language teachers.
Today the choral group Musica Felice presented their summer concert. Many of their members are from the English Catholic community and a special addition to this program was blind and deaf young people, including deaf students from the Maryknoll Deaf Development Programme. Click here to see pictures from the performance.
Click here for more pictures of the forest, cabins, and activities of the deaf youth camp in Preah Vihear Province.
We have a youth camp each year as part of our program with the Finnish Association of the Deaf to train deaf leaders. Click here to see our trip to this year’s camp site and our arrival.
Our teachers in all our classroom were in Phnom Penh this past week for a week of teacher training, part of the long break the Education Project has every year at the time of the Khmer New Year. On this day the power was off so the teachers are outside but the lack of electricity didn’t matter too much because they were learning new Cambodian signs from one of our deaf sign language teachers.
After getting each of DDP’s projects assigned to an area of the new building, we have been focusing on getting the building renovated so that the projects can work better. Because electricity has been very expensive in Cambodia and people were used to living without it, there is little efficient wiring and lighting in Cambodian buildings. Especially at the new DDP, the building was really dark. Now our contractor is just about finished replacing all very small fluorescent lights with new and much brighter LED lighting fixtures.