Category: Deaf

People and activities in the Cambodian deaf world

ANM (Thursday)

Yesterday was spent sitting around the meeting table but this morning was spent shooting video for the seven short films Kalle is making.  Then in the afternoon the meetings resumed.  Click here and then scroll down to Thursday.

ANM (Wednesday)

The Deaf Development Programme office was closed today for the celebration of Women’s Day, a public holiday in Cambodia, but Johanna Karinen met with Keat Sokly and Charlie Dittmeier all day long, away from the office.  And Johanna was joined by two colleagues who arrived from Finland.  Click here and scroll down to Wednesday.

ANM (Monday)

Every year a project coordinator from the Finnish Association of the Deaf comes to Cambodia for a week of Annual Negotiations Meetings (ANM) about the FAD’s funding of the Maryknoll Deaf Development Programme.  Johanna Karinen, FAD’s representative, arrived yesterday and we began our meetings today.  Click here.

Women’s Day

DDP celebrated International Women’s Day on Sunday rather than on Wednesday of this week in order to make it more accessible to more of the deaf community.  The Catholic Church Student Center allowed us to set up our tents in their spacious yard.  Click here to see the activities.

Technology and Deaf People

Technology has really benefited the deaf community.  Twenty, thirty years ago, communications among deaf people was either face-to-face or via TTY or TDD machines attached to telephone landlines.  Now, with the advent of smartphones and cheaper data service availability, deaf people can communicate more readily, like this young deaf woman signing to her friend on a smartphone Facebook Messenger connection.

DDP Staff Wedding

DDP has a young staff and we are always having weddings of the staff, here in Phnom Penh and in the provinces.  The latest one was Mr. Heng Ravy, our Job Training Project assistant, who married Ms. Roeun Srey March.

Before the wedding: A Cambodian wedding, even a Catholic wedding, is quite different from a Catholic wedding in the United States.  Here is the sanctuary prepared for the ceremony.
Before the wedding: No organ for these weddings.  They usually do have an electronic keyboard and guitar but this one also had these traditional percussion instruments to accompany a blessing dance that was part of the event.
The ceremony lasted nearly two hours with various cultural additions.  Finally when it was over many of the congregation gathered for a group photo with the newly married couple.
Ravy the groom is our staff member and afterwards the DDP staff who were present posed with Ravy and Srey March.  The two women on the right are the only Catholic members of the DDP staff.