Wednesday, June 20th, 2007
It’s Been Too Long!
Without offering up excuses, I will say that it has definitely been too long since the last blog post. I hope you all haven’t given up on us. Here’s what we have been up to:
Second printing of Easy to Learn KSL posters
You may remember an earlier post on a poster we developed together with Frank Lester, a fellow PCV. The original purpose of the poster was to aid parents in communicating with their Deaf children. A first printing of 1,500 posters have been distributed. Parents who have gone home with their poster have been overwhelmingly grateful to have a tool to use for communicating with their child. Even more exciting than meeting that goal of ours is to hear stories of all the other ways that these posters are being used.
-Education Assessment Resource centers are using the posters when they go out in the field to look for Deaf children who are not yet in school
-Teachers are using the posters in the classroom as a visual aid. Several teachers have reported that their students love to play a little game in which they cover the English word and students have to fingerspell the word while looking at the sign.
-Countless workers and other school community members have come to our house asking for a poster. It is the hottest thing in town right now.
…Loads of other success stories have come our way since we started distributing these things. Sooo, in the upcoming second printing we are boosting the number to about 5,000 and aiming to distribute them as widely as possible.
Hospital Signs and booklet
In the spirit of the Easy to Learn KSL poster, we are now in the process of developing a poster and pocket guide for signs and basic communication typically used in the hospital. We decided that this project was a must after getting story after story about the kinds of confusion, misdiagnosis, and sometimes mistreatment that Deaf adults face when visiting the hospital.
Right now we are meeting with and collecting information from the Liverpool Voluntary Counseling and (HIV) Testing center in Kisumu, a hospital in Kericho and two schools in the Western province to gather all the signs and information we need to develop the poster and booklet. We felt that booklets would be a great tool for doctors and nurses to carry around in their pockets as they meet with patients throughout the day. While the poster will have the same basic format as Easy to Learn KSL, the booklets will expand on essential topics such as getting patient particulars and prescribing medication.
We hope to have prototypes ready at the end of the month and a first printing soon after.