Category: Deaf

People and activities in the Cambodian deaf world

Student Experience

After a carcinoma was removed from my right forearm, I needed to change the bandage every two days and it was almost impossible with just one hand. Today I asked some of the deaf students to help.

Primarily I just wanted to give them a new experience since they would not be exposed much to this type of wound. There is no Cambodian sign for cancer so I just signed there was a problem in my arm and then explained the steps of biopsy, excision, bandaging, removal of the stitches, etc. They would probably not also have a chance to see the actual stitches in someone’s arm.
Another reason for asking them to help was to affirm them. Deaf people in Cambodia are looked down upon and mostly ignored. These young people have never even talked to their own parents because their families do not know sign language. They can get the impression that they are useless, a burden on the family, and without value. Letting them help me and my thanking them gives them a sense that they are good and can do good things and people will appreciate them.

Training the way it should be….

This week a representative of the national deaf association of Thailand (by the fan) came to Phnom Penh as part of the training of young Cambodian deaf people to be leaders in a national association here. it is wonderful to see deaf leaders training our deaf leaders in fluent sign language. They learn so much more when their teacher is deaf himself!

Sign language resource

Patrick Labelle is a French friend of the deaf who has developed an app for learning and using sign language. It’s for use by deaf children more than the general public.

Patrick explains his app, named Sign Discovery, to Julie Lawler and Thuch Sophy from our DDP education project.

UNDP Validation Workshop

The United Nations Development Programme has been conducting an analysis of the situation of deaf people in Cambodia. Today there was a workshop to review the initial findings and offer comments and corrections.

Mr. Sit Song, a director at UNDP, welcomed all the participants from the deaf community, NGOs, and government offices.
Nino, an external consultant hired to conduct the analysis, presented the preliminary findings.
Charlie offered an observation about the role of government after part of the presentation.

Power Cut at DDP

We have intensive Deaf Leadership Training going on at DDP but it was interrupted Friday by a power cut.

The leadership training couldn’t continue with their agenda that required a projector but Soknym, our director, met with the group outside.
The Year 1 and Year 2 classes also moved outdoors. The power was off about an hour.

Sharing expertise

Today a group of speech therapists from the UK visited the Caritas Deaf Development Programme to learn about deaf people in Cambodia and what DDP does. DDP uses only sign language and has no oral training and so there are few intersections between the work of the two NGOs but it was good to talk and learn.

Trouble above

When we came to the Deaf Development Programme this morning, we found that a large section of the ceiling had collapsed in our training room. We were planning to have a large meeting there Friday so I got on the phone to arrange for us to use a meeting room at the Catholic church near us.

NSSF

This week an official from the National Social Security Fund came to DDP to explain to our staff about the rather new social security program in Cambodia. He spend three hours explaining the fund with a sign language interpreter for the deaf staff. The beginning of a social security program is a BIG step forward for Cambodia.