Changsha Deaf Center Project Progress Report

Here is a new update on the ChangSha Deaf Centre:

Xinde Rehabilitation Center is a non-profit organization providing rehabilitation service for handicapped children. It was founded by the Church of Hunan Province in Changsha City in the year of 2001. The center was registered in the Bureau of Civil Affairs in the same year and started to work for children with learning difficulties and hard of hearing.

Their very good rehabilitation services for deaf children have given them a good reputation as a reliable centre among the families with deaf children. More and more children are asking to go to this school, making the need for expansion more and more urgent. This also means a need for more places, more equipment, more teachers and improvement of teachers’ capacity. This all translates into the need for more investment.

There are 100 children and 25 teachers in the school that currently occupy 700m². Most of the children are from poor mountainous areas in Hunan Province. Their families are quite poor and could not afford the cost for rehabilitation if they had to pay for it themselves. These people need external help and support, so the centre is greatly appreciative for NMS’s support.

Completed Activities:

During the reporting period Changsha Deaf Center has successfully purchased new equipment, desks, chairs and toys for children with disabilities.
A training program has also been given to teachers in the center.

Changsha Deaf Center has devoted itself to the rehabilitation of deaf children. In 2009, the center improved basic facilities for living and studying for the children. New equipments for audition testing and adjustment have been purchased.

In addition to this, new desks, chairs and toys are bought in, and electricity supply system has been reconstructed so that the center can avoid power cuts in summer, which was frequent in the past. The Center also taught the children how to protect themselves and avoid accidental injuries. Two parents training sessions have been held to help the parents.

They learned how to develop their children’s audition, how to communicate with their children etc. Sixteen teachers went to XiangYa Hospital to study audiology for a whole day, and one teacher was sent to Beijing to study audiology for a week.

Results:

Thanks to the generous contribution from Norwegian Mission Society, the teaching facilities of the center have been improved, while teachers feel more confident to serve for children with disabilities.

With the basic equipment, the center is now able to test children’s audition and provide more effective instruction to develop the children’s audition.

With improved facilities and better equipped teachers and parents, the children are able to make better progress. It is such a pleasure to see how these great kids are developing and interacting!

Moreover, these well-trained teachers could be able to undertake more tasks that they didn’t know how to do in the past. The advanced knowledge they received will help them do better work in the future.

YongShun Environmental project is up and running!

The Contruction of YaDong Reservior  started in August. Now nearly half of the project has been finished, and the construction will be finished at the end of November. 

Training:  A total of 400 people have received training, including 200 peasants and 200 technicians from an agro-technical station. The training is about agricultural production and animal husbandry such as advanced knowledge to produce rice, fruits and raising cattle. The training will be completed in mid December. 

Drinking Water Project in LaoSiCheng:  Our local partner has finished the preparation work, including distance measurements, peasant mobilization, matching fund allocation, etc. This is the agricultural harvest season, so local people do not currently have time to focus on this project. They will be organized for labor contribution from early October, and the project will be finished in early December if everything goes smoothly. 

Have you “cleaned your holiday tickets”?

Let’s face it, if you’re able to access this article, you’ve probably taken a plane or contributed to pollution in some way through your lifestyle just like me. If you’re interested in making your lifestyle somewhat more “carbon neutral” or reduce your “carbon footprint” by buying carbon offset, or just contribute to a great environmental project, you can now do this in YongShun through NMS & Amity.

Recommended donations:
For intercontinental flights: 35 Pounds Sterling/ 350 HKD/NOK
For flights within your continent: 15 Pounds Sterling/ 150 HK Dollars/NOK.

You are of course free to pay a lot more or less than this! To make a donation to this biogas project, click here (if you can't read this page, please send me an e-mail telling me where you live and I'll let you know the best way to send the funds) . To read more about this project in English, click here. To read more about this in Norwegian, click here or here.

The ChangSha Deaf Centre

Changsha Deaf Center has devoted itself to the rehabilitation of deaf children. In 2009, the center tried to improve basic facilities for living and studying for the children. New equipments for audition testing and adjustment have been purchased, and the center is able to test children’s audition and provide more effective instruction to develop the children’s audition.

In addition to this, new desks, chairs and toys are bought in, and electricity supply system has been reconstructed so that the center can avoid power cuts in summer, which was frequent in the past. The Center also taught the children how to protect themselves and avoid accidental injuries. Two parents training sessions have been held to help the parents.

They learned how to develop their children’s audition, how to communicate with their children etc. Sixteen teachers went to Xiangya Hospital to study audiology for a whole day, and one teacher was sent to Beijing to study audiology for a week. With improved facilities and better equipped teachers and parents, the children will be able to make better progress. It is such a pleasure to see how these great kids are developing and interacting!

If you’re interested in supporting this project financially, please send me an e-mail telling me where you live or leave a message to this blog post and I’ll look into the best ways for the funds to be channelled to this project. If you read Norwegian, you can donate this way.

If you'd like to read more about this project in Norwegian, click here.

The YongShun Project is ready to start!

Project implementation of this great project has not yet started, but much preparation work has been done.

Activities planned for this year:
Rebuilding irrigation canal system of Yadong Reservoir
Training agriculture technicians and farmers on safety agriculture product.

An important part of this project is the joint planning of villagers, Village heads, local officials, the United Front, the County Agricultural Bureau as well as Amity (our long term partner organization in China and an NGO with long experience in HuNan Province).

In recent meetings, this year’s activities (points 1 & 2 overleaf) were the main discussion topics. In particular, they discussed how to organize physical labor input and how to solve possible dispute in the process of rebuilding. What is so good about this process, is how the discussions currently are taking place in each of the villages so that the issues at hand can be solved on a local level.

As originally planned, five training sessions will be held by the end of this year. This is not entirely uncomplicated as the training technicians and farmers are busy in certain seasons with agricultural activities and may be away during other parts of the year. The training will therefore need to suit local agricultural seasons. With a combination of flexibility, commitment to the training and communication, we will however be able to do the 5 training sessions well!

Next steps:
a) Breaking ground and starting the construction of the Yadong irrigation canal.
b) Hold the first training session.

YongShun Environmental project is now approved!

NMS have supported many biogas projects over the years in HuNan though our brilliant Chinese partner organisation, Amity. YongShun in HuNan Province, is however a new and exciting area!

The YongShun environmental project will provide biogas installations for about 600 families in this predominantly TuJia area. These installations turns their biological rubbish and the poo from the farmer, his family and theirs livestock into methane gas for cooking, light and hot water for the whole family. As is that wasn’t enough, they also end up with good and safe fertiliser for their farms.

This is quite simply a brilliant project. Not only is it environmentally friendly as people end up not having to use coal or wood from bush/tree-scarce areas, but it also makes the homes a lot cleaner and better for their health. The women no longer have to breathe in all the smoke as she is cooking, and the houses get rid of a lot of unwanted dirt that makes the homes much cleaner. On my last trip, I saw the cleanest pigsty I’ve ever seen!

As this installation saves a lot of time, in particular for women, they use the opportunity to take part in useful agricultural courses that can be simply implemented. All this is also a very effective way of increasing the household income at a time when many poor farmers are really struggling due to the effects of the financial crisis.

In addition to the biogas installations, the project will also provide better access to clean water for these farmers as we plan to improve a broken water channel in YaDong and build up a drinking water reservoir in SiCheng (both areas are villages in YongShun).

The pictures are from my last trip in YongShun. I’m off again to the project area on the 27th of this month.

If you’re interested in supporting this project financially, please send me an e-mail telling me where you live or leave a message to this blog post and I’ll look into the best ways for the funds to be channelled to this project. If you read Norwegian, you can donate this way.

Some project updates!

On this blog, we will give you more details on our Development projects in the People's Republic of China. I hope you'll be following our posts with interest!