Planning Meeting |
After the two workshops last week, the participants from the policy makers workshop gathered again today to begin planning for the future of deaf education in Cambodia. After reviewing the goals and needs listed by the two earlier workshops, today's participants worked in small groups to narrow down objectives. This group is from the Disability Action Council.
The Ministry of Education will necessarily play a large role in developing deaf education for the future. Several ministry staff from various departments such as primary education, gender equality, and special education participated in the workshop and today's planning meeting.
The workshops and planning meeting may have a great impact on Krousar Thmey, the local NGO that runs the four deaf schools and the 28 integrated classes in Cambodia, because their program has developed so quickly and in so many different aspects.
Forming a small group to make recommendations by themselves about what they had heard and seen were the two presenters from Finland. Having received text messages about more than 12 inches of new snow waiting for them back home, they opted to spend their last afternoon out in the warm sunshine as they discussed.
The Deaf Development Program small group consisted of the program manager, the leader of the teaching team, and the two program advisors.
After the work in the small groups, a representative from each explained the needs and objectives the groups had come up with. Here the Ministry of Education explains their suggestions.
The National Institute of Public Health facility is one of the most frequently used meeting venues in Phnom Penh. There aren't that many meeting facilities available, and this one has parking, is quiet, and has the little shelter built into a lotus pond for coffee breaks and lunches.
After lunch and all the small groups had reported their lists of objectives, there were several discussions on some of the points raised and then the large group attempted to come to some kind of consensus on the major items for attention in the short and long terms.