What do we fund through SGP?

Deaf Child Worldwide believes that families should have access to all the skills and information they need to support their deaf child. This contributes to improving communication and reducing isolation.

Through SGP, we aim to raise families’ awareness and knowledge of deafness and their role in their deaf child’s development. Activities which build families’ capacity to communicate with and support their deaf child’s language, social and emotional development are crucial to achieving this aim. We also aim to develop and produce culturally sensitive and quality educational and information material for literate and illiterate parents. We want parents to be in a position to help their child to develop communication skills and to make informed choices on the best available communication approach for their child.

Every child has a right to equal opportunities within the community. This means accessing essential services such as childcare, health services and education and being included in social and cultural life. Unfortunately, because of stigma, poverty or lack of information, deaf children and their families often miss out.  We aim to support you to raise community awareness on childhood deafness and the rights of deaf children and to make sure mainstream community activities are accessible to deaf children and their families. We aim to support communities to ensure that deaf children go to schools that meet their learning and communication needs.

In most developing countries, when a deaf child is diagnosed parents do not have access to relevant information about deafness and what it means. This lack of appropriate information leaves parents isolated and unable to identify positive ways forward for their child. This is compounded with poverty and parents’ low level of education.

Peer support groups are an opportunity for parents to share their experiences of parenting a deaf child, their anxieties and hopes for the future. We aim to promote peer support and raise parents’ expectations about their deaf child’s potential. We want to empower a greater number of parents and their deaf children to protect and defend their rights. We will support you to form local, regional and national networks of parents to lobby and advocate governments to develop policies and plans that take into account deaf children’s right to education, health and other services as enshrined in the UN Convention for the Rights of People with Disabilities.

Despite two UN conventions and lots of local laws many deaf children are denied their rights to education, family life and protection from abuse. Many developing countries have a Disability Act that has been approved by their governments. However, only a handful have policies and plans that ensure that the rights of people with disabilities are respected through adequate services and appropriate resource allocation. For governments in developing countries, deaf children are not a priority and deaf children themselves often don’t have a voice to campaign for change.

Through SGP, we want to support you to change this situation. Bringing families, deaf children and young deaf people together to discuss common issues and campaign for change is a powerful way of holding governments and services providers to account. When lobbying is combined with the development of a model of affordable and effective service provision, this can really help to make sure that deaf children’s rights become a reality.

Deaf Child Worldwide supports partners to develop replicable models of excellent and affordable services which governments and other service providers can then deliver to other deaf children and their families in their country. In order to ensure the sustainability of these models, we will ask organisations to show how they are actively engaged with the government or service providers.

Effective education, the delivery of appropriate support services such as community based rehabilitation or social benefits, hearing screening and technology are all key areas where we want to make sure governments have the appropriate skills to deliver their promises to deaf children.

Deaf Child Worldwide aims to fund project which represent good practice. For your application to be successful, please consider the cross-cutting themes below carefully and think about how you will include them in your proposal.

Poverty
Disability and deafness are both a cause and consequence of poverty. We want to break this link and enable deaf children to overcome poverty and isolation. You need to make sure you consider issues of deafness and poverty in your project proposal. How will you target your work to disadvantaged groups and make activities accessible and appropriate?

Participation
In order to ensure that the work we support is sustainable, we only work with organisations that involve beneficiaries in every step of a project. This means that projects respond to people’s needs appropriately and makes sure that beneficiaries feel a sense of ownership towards the activities. How will you make sure beneficiaries participate fully in the project needs assessment, design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation? How will their feedback be taken into account and the project adapted to reflect this?

Gender
Deaf Child Worldwide promotes gender equality. This means an equal participation of men and women, girls and boys in decision-making processes as well as an equal access to resources, employment and education. How will you make sure that men and women participate equally in activities? How will you make sure that deaf girls, who are often the most marginalised, are included? How will you assess and ensure that that the needs of deaf boys and deaf girls are addressed?

Social model of disability
Deaf Child Worldwide follows the social model of disability. In this model, social exclusion, stigma and environmental barriers define disability. This model is different from the medical model which implies that a person with a disability needs to be rehabilitated or cured in order to participate in society. We believe that the disabling impact of deafness can be reduced if communities and families learn about how they can include deaf children and meet their specific needs. How does your organisation think about disability? How do you promote the inclusion of people with disabilities? What communication approach does your organisation recognise for deaf children?

Sexual and reproductive health and HIV/AIDS
HIV/AIDS affects everyone. Because it is challenging for deaf children and young deaf people to access information, we want all our projects to consider how they can make information on sexual and reproductive health and HIV/AIDS accessible. When you carry out activities with deaf children and young people, do you discuss these topics? Are families aware that young deaf people need to learn about sexual and reproductive health? If your organisation does not have expertise on these issues, how will involve other organisations?

Strengthening local organisations
SGP aims to develop partnerships which improve local organisations’ ability to meet the needs of deaf children. Training or other technical capacity building for service providing organisations may be one way to achieve this aim. We want you to think about the ways in which we can support you to build your capacity.

Deaf Child Worldwide focuses particularly on building capacity in four key areas:
• Developing organisations’ skills to work from an informed choice perspective and meaningfully involve the parents and families of deaf children
• Developing education approaches which meet deaf children’s needs
• Developing and using simple tools to assess and monitor children’s communication and language skills (in order to assess the impact of activities).
• Developing organisations’ ability to incorporate cross-cutting themes to improve practices and systems.