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.