A chance to go to school for deaf children in Uganda

Deaf Child Worldwide has been working with partners in Bushenyi district in Uganda since 2005. You can read more about our work with them on our website.

Despite the fact that the Uganda government declared Universal Primary Education, there are still few school places for deaf children and hardly any trained teachers. The existing special schools charge fees which many poor families can not pay. Stigma also means deaf children are hidden at home or excluded from school. Kasiru meaning “stupid” is a common term used to describe deaf children and many families think their deaf children are not capable of learning. Even teachers had negative attitudes in the past – you can read testimonials written by teachers that were involved in the first phase of our work in Bushenyi here

However, thanks to our work – we are giving many deaf children their first chance to go to school. Their parents are amazed at the results. After only 2 months of our latest project, 43 deaf children were attending school daily and getting a chance to interact with their peers and learn literacy and numeracy. This is a huge achievement and will literally transform the lives of the kids involved. We are really proud of all the hard work of parents, teachers and kids in Bushenyi!

Do we really mean “all” when we say education for all?

Next week the Global Campaign for Education will launch its latest Action Week and attempt to break the Guinness World Record for the biggest lesson ever… If you’re a teacher or a student you might want to find out how your school can get involved or download free lesson plans at the Send My Friend website

Oxfam are talking about Global Action Week on their blog - but I’m wondering how much attention they’ve paid to the fact that worldwide one third of the out of school children have a disability…

What I find hard to understand is the fact that many international development organisations acknowledge that more girls than boys miss out on education and have made sure they focus on this in their programmes. But despite the scary statistic that 98% of disabled children in developing countries are not in school, not nearly as many organisations seem to have wised up to the fact that “education for all” will never be a reality unless we can make sure that disabled and deaf children can get to school, too.

That means that international organisations need to focus more of their efforts on making education in developing countries accessible. For many deaf children in developing countries that means providing education in the national Sign Language, either by training deaf teachers or providing interpreters. It’s not only about the schools, we also need to make sure communities are aware of their children’s rights and help challenge the stigma attached to disability.

All our governments can play a role – not only in allocating funding to education, but also in ensuring that funding is used to reform the education system to make sure that it genuinely meets the needs of all children. Civil society can support families with disabled or deaf children to campaign for their rights and provide models of inclusive education.

If you want to get involved in the Global Campaign – why not think about how you can raise the profile of all those disabled children missing out on school and ask questions about how governments and mainstream organisations make sure they’re included…I hope one day that education for all will really mean all.

Family matters…

…a lot to deaf children. As our organisation was set up by and is governed by parents of deaf children we are committed to working through families to reach deaf children. But in developing countries, families have so many different priorities… getting money, getting food, where to live, someone’s sick …the daily grind means that a child’s deafness is the last thing to worry about. For example in Kenya, one adult in five fails to meet their basic food needs every day. In the same country we did research that showed families were unwilling to pay school/medical fees for their deaf kids because they didn’t believe they would get the same return on their investment as with their other children.

At Deaf Child Worldwide, we believe that situation can change. There are practical steps that can be taken to help families support their deaf children and give them equal opportunities with others at home. The answer is to make sure families understand that their deaf children are capable of going to school and getting employment…make sure families have the ability to communicate with their kids and know about what organisations are out there to support them. Outreaching to families who know nothing about deafness is a key objective of our organisation – making services accessible to families is a personal passion too – that’s why I worked with the Enabling Education Network to produce a book Family Friendly! Working with deaf children and their communities worldwide It’s an action learning toolkit filled with real life case studies of what our partners and others have done to make sure families are able to support their deaf children… You can download it here or e-mail me at info@deafchildworldwide.org to get a paper or CD Rom copy…