‘Silent Voices’ Takes off!!

Many deaf children in Bushenyi district are not in school and there is a lack of community awareness about the potential of deaf children. This project will support the association of parents and teachers of deaf children to develop their activites in more remote areas of Bushenyi District.

Recipient:: Silent Voices
Country:: Uganda
Project contact:: Nathalie Jonkergouw (Silent Voices)
Start date:: 15 January 2008
End date:: 15 January 2009
Total budget:: 32,088,550.00 UGX (�9,263.63)
Beneficiary type:: Parents, Young deaf people, School aged children, Pre-school aged children, Teachers
Project type:: Parents' group, Sign language

Summary:

This project will build the capacity of the association of families and teachers to deliver services to a larger number of families with deaf children. The committee members will be trained in book/record keeping, management and proposal writing. The members will be given further training in Ugandan Sign Language and support to create awareness of deafness and the potential of deaf children in their communities.

group and Silent Voices sign

The project will also support the creation of 9 new units for deaf children attached to mainstream schools which will enable many deaf children who were previously denied an education, the opportunity to go to school.

Aim:

This project aims to provide parents with the necessary skills to sustain the newly created CBO to lobby for the improvement of services for deaf children and their families in the Bushenyi District.

Beneficiaries:

Committee members and parents who are members of Silent Voices
9 teachers
Parents of deaf children and communities

Activities:

Opening an office and training an office worker
The office will be located in the Bushenyi District Special Needs department and a suitable office worker who is deaf has been identified.
Each teacher and parent county member of Silent Voices will report back to this office regularly.
The VSO Organisational Development Worker will assist in establishing effective systems to meet the needs of Silent Voices.

Capacity building of committee members

The committee comprises of 5 teachers from the five county integrated schools and one parent from each county (five in total).
They will receive three weeks residential training during the year. This training will be carried out by the VSO Organisational Development Worker. Training will be provided to provide participants with the necessary skills to run an organisation (reporting, elections, planning and participatory methodology, record and book keeping, etc.)
Parents and teacher will also participate in monthly meetings alongside other members (see activities below)

Empowering members to participate in organisational process

This activity will initially take place during the one-day monthly outreach visit to each county.
The VSO Organisational Development Worker will encourage parents to express their feelings and share experiences whilst gradually building their self-confidence and providing parents with the skills to participate in organisational planning processes and advocacy activities.

Sign Language for parent members by unit teachers in respective county groups

This will be carried out once a month during county outreach visits.
Unit teachers were trained in Sign Language as part of the previous SGP project in Bushenyi and Sign Language classes will follow the model established with parents during this project.

Publication of awareness materials

The brochure will contain information about deafness and will be distributed by parents during community awareness activities in health centres, churches, etc.

Training of teachers to open nine new units for deaf children

Teachers from nine mainstream schools in areas with high number of deaf children will be trained in the county integrated schools for one week each term.
These teachers will also receive monthly follow up visits from previously trained committee members. These will provide members with an opportunity to assess trainees' performance as well as provide feedback.
Having deaf aware teachers in local schools will allow deaf children to attend schools within their catchment area.

Achievements:

Summary of project impact

The most significant impact directly attributable to this project is that the opening of 9 new units has led to 43 deaf children who were previously not in school now being able to attend on a daily basis. It is anticipated that this number will increase as the project progresses.
6 more deaf students have passed the primary leaving exam. This is a huge achievment and shows how, along with other actors, Deaf Child Worldwide has helped to improve quality of education accessed by deaf children in the district since 2005.
The activities have only been undertaken for 3 months, so it is not possible to demonstrate a large impact in terms of the sustainability of the parents' association. However each of the 5 parents groups have selected 3 representatives who attend the residential training and facilitate the county meetings. Formal elections for the committee will be held in November.
89 parents have received Sign Language training.

Summary of project progress

The Silent Voices office is open (see the picture above!) and the project team have been focussing on building the capacity of the volunteer committee members.
A 1-week residential training for 18 new unit teachers (2 from each of the 9 units) was a success and 2 days of teacher outreach training have been carried out at each of the 9 units. 3 new units have used the teacher outreach visits as an opportunity to call parents for sensitisation.
A 1 week residential training session for committee members has been held and 20 people participated. Topics covered have included (doing energisers, active listening, making decisions in a group, what are good and bad organisations, what are the roles of a committee).
2 outreach parent meetings have been held at each of the 5 existing units , and Sign Language training has also been delivered at these sessions. 89 parents attended the first meeting and 70 in the 2nd meeting. (age range is 14-70)
The members are discussing options for the awareness raising activities. It has been suggested that a 2009 calendar and a series of radio talk shows are currently the most likely activities.
The indirect beneficiaries of the activities are 123 deaf children (80 at existing units, 43 at new units) (4-14years old).

Challenges

It was important to accept that breast-feeding mothers needed to bring their babies but it can be hard for the mothers to concentrate on the sessions if the babies are demanding attention. So a space was created for babies and their baby-sitters.
It has been a challenge to translate organisational development training into an understandable format for illiterate parents. This is an issue for all groups, but affects one particularly. The training now does not use any written instructions /notes. It relies solely on visualisation, mime, role plays, picture work etc.

Read two case studies about 'Silent Voices'

miriam and her mother jovia