Activities |
Deaf Day Celebration |
Every year deaf communities around the world celebrate Deaf Day, an occasion for deaf people to come together and enjoy themselves and also educate society generally about deafness and the deaf people. The Cambodia Deaf Day celebration was on Sunday, 28 October, but DDP students and some family members from the DDP centers in Kampot and Kampong Cham came to Phnom Penh on Saturday and in the afternoon toured the DDP offices. |
At 2:00 PM, the deaf students and the DDP staff members from the DDP center in Kampot arrived at the offices of the Deaf Development Programme. Many of them had never seen the center of DDP operations in Phnom Penh before. | |
Justin Smith, the DDP Deputy Director (right), showed a staff diagram to two new DDP staff members from Kampot who were visiting the main office in Phnom Penh for the first time. | |
After everyone had gathered, Selwyn Hoffmann, a deaf volunteer from Australia, explained some of the procedures for tomorrow's big celebration. Then he introduced Louise, a deaf volunteer from the UK, who was to take photographs of the deaf people and the activities on Saturday and Sunday. | |
Louise waited outside the building and grabbed each deaf person as he or she came along and took two photographs, one a head-and-shoulders shot and the other a picture showing the person's name sign. | |
The Kampot group stayed about 1½ hours and then returned to their hotel. Then the group from Kampong Cham arrived, more numerous than the first group. | |
In addition to the official welcome and the taking of individual photographs for a future directory, the deaf people were led around the DDP buildings for a quick tour. Here one of the Sign Language Project staff explains the work that takes place in her workroom. |
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