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.