Annual report for the ChangSha Deaf Centre 2010

Chansha school for deaf children is a great example of God’s love being shown practically to the people of Hunan province. If this school did not exist many of its students would not be attending school. Both because the local schools won’t enroll them and also because the majority of the students are too poor to go anywhere else. The school faces many challenges. It receives no support from the government, so all its support comes from churches and organisations such as NMS. The neighbours of the school dislike having the school in their building and sometimes throw rubbish at the children, because of this the school is looking for better premises. There is also a high teacher turn over rate. It is not easy working at the school, the hours are long and the pay is not great. And yet, the school still has one of the best reputations in the country amongst the hearing impaired community.

The school is situated in Hunan province in China. It was started in 2002 by Mrs Wang. She originally started the school because her own son, who is hearing impaired, was unable to get a place in a regular government school.

Since then the school has gone from strength to strength. It started with only a handful of students and yet now has over 90 full time students. 80% of the students come from poor rural backgrounds. 7 of which receive scholarships as their family’s are too poor to pay the small fee that is needed to study here. The students range from 2 to 7 years old. The school is a boarding school, so all the students live and study at the facility.

There are more than 40 staff members at the school. With the money that the school receives the staff has been able to carry out several training programmes and send several teachers on courses to improve their education. This year the school has started holding training sessions for the parents, these sessions encourage parents to become involved in their child’s education and teaches them how to do this.

This year, 17 former students have managed to enroll in regular primaries and kindergartens. Chang Sha school for deaf children has a much higher success ratio at helping children integrate into the mainstream Chinese school system than the government facilities do. Their success ratio is 40% to 45%, whilst the government institutions is only 25%.

Many parents come back later to say thank you to Mrs Wang and the school for the amazing help that she has given their children.

The school has gone on several outings for fun and also to help promote awareness of the hearing impaired. On China’s national “Love the Ear day” the students and teachers went to the park, gave out leaflets and demonstrated to people how to better look after your ears!

Thank you for all your prayers and support, as you have read, it is greatly needed, appreciated and gives life changing results.

The bittersweet story of MeiLin

Life can be harsh in China. MeiLin, who was born deaf, has already experienced how.

Poor family

Her family is quite poor, partly as a result of her father also being disabled as he has only one hand. In China people are often ashamed of disabilities.

Embarrassed mother

Her mother was so embarrassed about the fact that her daughter could not speak that she abandoned MeiLin. She did not visit or see her daughter for a whole year.

A thriving girl

Fortunately, MeiLin enrolled in Changsha Deaf Centre. She is a smart little girl, eager to learn and at Changsha Deaf Centre she thrived. With the help of her teachers she learnt to speak.

When her uncle found out that she could speak he was so happy that he decided to get in contact with his sister and he convinced her that she should return home. The mother returned and is now a part of the family again!

Peace

Reverend Yao, leader of XinDe foundation who started the centre, remarked that “the improvement of this little girl is going to bring reconciliation to her broken up family”. The head teacher of the school, Mrs Wang, said “This is an unexpected result. The peace of God transcends all understanding.”

Great opportunity!


It’s fantastic that girls like MeiLin, who otherwise would have no chance to go to school, can come to the deaf centre in ChangSha! We wish you a very blessed Christmas!

Even more can be helped!!

Just as you read this, farmers in YoungShun are starting the construction of biogas household digesters. This year, we had planned to build 600 biogas installations, train 100 biogas technicians and train 3000 biogas users in how to keep up their biogas installations and ensure good health and hygiene practices. However, due to very efficient use of funds, it turns out that we will be able to help almost 700 needy families build biogas installations, train almost 120 biogas technicians and more than 3000 farmers will be trained!

There is a great deal of joy in YongShun about this expansion as there is a great need in these poor mountainous villages. These biogas installations that turn poo into energy makes a very real difference in people’s lives as it makes their homes cleaner, improves their health and saves money and time that they used to spend on picking straw, wood and buying coal. Getting free high quality fertilizer is another welcome benefit for these farmers. It’s also really nice that these installations save the environment too!

The training of biogas technicians is also very welcome as there now are many households in YongtShun with biogas digesters, but very few technicians who can fix them when these digesters break. Being able to train normal villagers to be able to repair these digesters are therefore extremely important in order to ensure that people can benefit from these digesters many years after

We are very excited about this expansion and how this project has a positive impact on people’s lives. However, at the same time, we’re not quite on target when it comes to fundraising for this project.

So, perhaps you or someone you know would consider giving a donation to the YongShun project? If you’re interested, please send us an e-mail and I will advice you on how you best can channel funds from your country.

We can help even more people!

We're really excited about the fact that even more farmers than planned are able to get biogas digesters in YongShun.

Right now, 680 households are building their biogas digesters in YongShun! This improves people's lives not only in terms of more funds for food, education etc. (as they don't need to buy coal), but also cleaner smoke free kitchens, more hygenic bathrooms and animal pens, and even more free time!

In the autumn, we're able to train 110 biogas village technicians and train 3000 farmers in how to keep up the biogas digesters and improve health and hygiene. This is a crucial way of ensuring the sustainability of these biogas digesters!

This project which is not only improves the environment but also improves people’s quality of life is warmly welcome in Hunan as the province was severely hit by recent floods.

The reason for this expansion, is that our local partner, Amity Foundation has used the funds very efficiently which allows about 80 more families to get a biogas digester as well as en expansion of the people trained as biogas technicians.

Summer in the ChangSha Deaf Centre

This spring has been an exciting time in the ChangSha Deaf Centre. Due to your continued support, we are now able to now admit 102 students from 2-7 years that would otherwise would have a very uncertain future. With your support, we are not only able to keep the school fees low enough so that quite poor households can afford this education, but we are also able to admit 7 students from very poor households free of charge.

Even though the children in our centre are from poor households and as deaf children often have a disadvantage in today’s China, we are very excited about the fact that they are reaching out to the community and bring happiness to others. In China, Children’s day (June 1^st) is celebrated in a big way. This day, children and parents, along with the leaders, gathered in the botanical garden to have a party, celebration and a performance.
On May 16^th, National Disability Day, they carried out activities involving caring for the handicapped in the local community by giving performances. For the National Ear Care Day, the children carried out a public campaign and education programs about ear care in the park using performances, leaflets, and consultation methods. It is exciting to see how the children thrive on doing performances and making others happy!

Seeing what a blessing the ChangSha deaf centre is to our students, we are very happy that our headmaster, Xueying Wang, was able to go to Huaihua to help setting up a new rehabilitation center for deaf children!

Our premises are still quite small, so we are delighted that volunteers from local universities and secondary schools often come to take the children to visit museums, go to the parks or river the banks for activities of different types.

Since our last blog post, we have also run a lot of training sessions for parents and teachers. We added a new regular parent training session every Friday this year to encourage parents to participate in the rehabilitation of deaf children and learn to communicate with and share more with their children. We can see how this is having a positive effect. Our teachers have been trained by experts from both the University of Melbourne (Australia) and Taiwan and our teachers have also taken part in the Hunan Symposium about the rehabilitation of deaf children.

We praise God for His blessings and protection!

Clean water in YongShun!

A lot has happened in the YongShun project:

1. The Construction of YaDong Reservoir is now complete and is making a big difference in people’s lives!

2. 400 people have received training about agricultural production and animal husbandry.

3. Drinking Water Project in LaoSiCheng is now completed.

The aggregation channel (1) is of immense importance to the farmers because the channel means more water to the fields, which again means more crops when the autumn comes around. I was amazed by how grateful they were for the aggregation channel, the drinking water and the training. We couldn’t have been better welcomed! We were met by the village leader, five men playing various drums and fireworks. They took us to see the newly built irrigation channel and then they gave us lunch. Each family in the village had prepared one dish each for us! In a way it seems bizarre that they are so grateful for something as basic as water for their fields...

Irene: Left and found

Recently, a mother brought her 15-year-old daughter ,Irene, to the office of the headmaster of the ChangSha Deaf Centre, Wang XueYing. The mother was really excited and told Wang that the girl is now a student on Grade 3 in one of the best middle schools in the City of XiangTan. She won the 19^th place among 200 competitors of selected middle school students in the Olympics Math Contest. The mother brought the child to Changsha from XiangTan just to report this good news to the headmistress, Mrs. Wang. She talked with tears in her eyes. If it was not for the hearing aids in the girl’s ears, you might not even notice that she had any problems hearing.

Ten years ago, when she was five years old, her parents found out she was not able to speak because she was deaf. They sent her to the School for Deaf Children in ChangSha where Wang is the headmistress and went back home to prepare to have a new healthy baby instead of taking care of Irene. For two years, her parents didn’t come to Changsha to see their daughter or pick her up to go home. Even during Spring Festival (the biggest holiday in China) she had no place to go but to stay at the headmaster’s home, Mrs. Wang.

When Irene turned seven years old, the headmistress, Mrs Wang approached several schools, but Irene was not accepted by any of them. Finally, Mrs. Wang went to the primary school near her home and tried to enroll her as her own daughter with her own child’s name. Mrs. Wang promised the school that if the child could not catch up with the lessons, they could dismiss her at any time. At the end of the first semester, the child got full scores in every course except music. The head master of the school of the primary school hugged her in front of all the teachers and students in the assembly and said, “She is the pride of our school. She is the best!” After this, her parents came to Changsha to pick up their child and she finally got to live with her parents again.

God has given Headmistress Mrs. Wang a number of hearing impaired children to love and take care of. He has also given her love and compassion so that she can take good care of each child in the centre independently of their financial background. She is very proud of these children and is thankful to God for His blessings and provision.

The Headmaster of the ChangSha Deaf Centre, Mrs. Wang and Rev. Jane Yao, the leader of the Three Self Patriotic Movement in HuNan who manages the ChangSha Deaf Centre.

Love Makes a Difference

Chen Rui is a pretty little girl from western Hunan province in the grand People's Republic of China. What has given this angel a tragic start to her life is that she lives in a soundless world. When we first came to ChangSha Language Training Center, the two-year-old child looked all round her for the colorful toys and playmates. In her mother's arms, she was very anxious and excited to express her feelings and used these sounds: “wala wala wuwu” (this does not mean anything in Chinese), but we did not understand her. She smiled, but her mother started crying.

In the ChangSha Deaf Centre, she learnt to feed herself, put on shoes, do up the buttons and a series of other useful skills. A month later, she could already say “ma-ma” and “ba-ba” (“Mother” and “Father” in Chinese). However, as she lives in a mountainous area in HuNan and her family is suffering financial hardship, they could not easily afford the best hearing-aid and this made it difficult for her to hear or understand anything. Her parents were very sad and her teachers were dreadfully sorry for her.

In 2007, she got a new hearing aid. She has noticeably improved her hearing. Now she is able to distinguish sounds clearly. What a big change for her! Chen Rui has made tremendous progress in her study. After a year of rehabilitation, her hearing ability has reached Grade III. Now she takes the initiative to communicate with others in words.

Her parents were very pleased with her progress. They were so excited that they could hardly find suitable words to express their gratitude, but kept on saying: Thank you! Thank You! Love really makes a difference! Thank you to all supporters for your support to the ChangSha Deaf Centre. If you are interested in helping children like Chen Rui, please send a mail or if you understand Norwegian, please make a donation here.