Bi Salon at Work!

DDP has a Job Training Project and one of our placements for training of young deaf women is at Bi Salon, where ten of our students are trained in various parts of the operations of a beauty salon. Ms. Kem Khemara, a local businesswoman who spent seven years in Japan, owns the salon and has been the driving force in welcoming and training our students who have done very well under her tutelage.

Last week Khemara surprised us by bringing her stylists to DDP and cutting our students’ and staff’s hair in an impromptu salon on our new front porch. It was a wonderful experience, especially for many of the deaf young women who seldom if ever have their hair cut like that, and we sincerely thank Khemara and her staff for their generosity with their time and their talents!

Kem Khemara (L) cutting a student’s hair in an impromptu beauty session at DDP.
DDP students waiting their turn for a haircut.
Khemara and her stylists with DDP staff and students after an afternoon of cutting.

Unwanted Surprise

We moved our office to a new site last week (I’ll be starting a series of photos about that tomorrow) and today we got a surprise at the new site when the main waterline from the street broke. It took us a long time to find and dig up the cutoff valve and then it wouldn’t work so we plugged the incoming pipe with a cap held on by a brick and the concrete buttress until Sokly our director could run out and get a piece of replacement pipe and get it connected. Well done, Sokly!

Good Publicity

Recently DDP was contacted by a local station’s producer who wanted to do a short segment on DDP and its work.  Today he came to interview a couple of our staff and one of the deaf students.  We hope to see the results on air in a few days!

The producer first interviewed our DDP director, Keat Sokly, and then he sat down with Korn Maly (pictured here), the manager of our Sign Language Project.

Then the producer filmed one of our deaf students answering questions about her experience at the Deaf Development Programme.