The Deaf Development Program has a class of about twenty deaf students in Kampot, a coastal province south of Phnom Penh. Four of us staff from Phnom Penh went there for a visit to check on the progress of teaching, to examine a new toilet we had built for the school, and to check on the medical problems of students there. This is a picture of the government school where we operate our deaf classroom. The government has no connection with the class other than allowing us to use one of their classrooms.
This is the room in the school--apparently some sort of auditorium previously--which the government first offered us to use for the deaf students. Feeling it left something to be desired, we held out for a better classroom and got one with an intact roof and a tiled floor.
The students in Kampot had never met our new program manager, Neang Putheara (standing, third from left), so our first activity was to introduce him. Notice how dark it is in the classroom. There is no installed wiring in the building and no lights.
One of the students writes the answer to a question on the whiteboard. Ketya, in the blue shirt, is the hearing teacher in Kampot. In all DDP classrooms, one deaf teacher and one hearing teacher work together.
In the provinces where there is no school for formal education of deaf children, DDP accepts students under the age of fifteen. Our program is not designed for them, however, but for students like these older deaf people who are learning literacy and sign language.