India

The Annual Convention of Educators of the Deaf was held in Meghalaya from 10 to 12 December 2007.

It was hosted by the Meghalaya chapter of the NCED-India at the Ferrando Speech and Hearing Centre, Barapani under the stewardship of Sr. Merly Tom, Principal of the Centre.

IDCS-India and the Graham Bell Centre for the Deaf (GBCD), which is based in Pandua in West Bengal, will work together on Project SWANIRMAN, a project for providing training to deaf children and their parents to empower them to take decisions for themselves.

As a first step of IDCS-India coming into Assam, a seminar on the theme ‘Towards a new horizon – the social and emotional needs of deaf children and their families’ was held in Guwahati on October 10 2007.

The seminar introduced IDCS-India and asked stakeholders - deaf children, parents of deaf children and professionals -  to discuss a theme with a practical application to the lives of deaf children and their families.

Similar seminars have been held in West Bengal over the past year and evoked a wonderful response from the participants.

Our partner, VOICES - in collaboration with a Bangalore-based theater group Masrah - has been conducting a workshop for deaf students of the Sheila Kothavala Institute for the Deaf, Bangalore.

The play, Colour Wheel, which was produced at the end of this workshop, has been performed at different schools in Bangalore and received an enthusiastic response from the children.

We are committed to actively involving deaf children and their families in all its work. We know that deaf children and their families understand their own needs best and that our work is most likely to be successful if they are involved.