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<TITLE>Re: London based charity endangers SW programs in Nicaragua</TITLE>
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<BLOCKQUOTE><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Is anyone on the list familiar with a London based charity called the Catholic Institute for International Relations (CIIR)? This organization pays travel expenses and provides a monthly stipend (about $1,000) to professionals who wish to provide consulting services for Third World grass roots social programs. CIIR is a very large organization with a good reputation. Unfortunately, their personnel know nothing about Deaf education. In the case of Condega, Nicaragua, this organization for the past three years has been paying an audiologist to advise the administrators of the Deaf school there.<BR>
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The Condega Deaf school, operated by an organization called Los Pipitos, and the Bluefields Deaf school were the only Deaf schools in Nicaragua to employ Deaf teachers and to teach SignWriting. The CIIR consultant, who has no signing skills, advised that Nicaraguan Sign Language was not a language at all. Consequently, he imposed a new curriculum based upon an oralist approach. The Deaf teachers were reassigned to work as cooks and quit shortly afterwards. (They now work as full time teachers at the Bluefields school.)<BR>
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I complained about this to Osvaldo Vasquez, the CIIR official in London having responsibility over the program. I asked for an investigation into why a CIIR development worker, paid to assist a Deaf empowerment program, would instead disempower the Deaf people (teachers and students) involved with the program. I urged Ms. Vasquez at the very least to question the Deaf teachers involved as part of any investigation. This he refused to do.<BR>
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I thought that as users of SignWriting, you might be interested in some of the comments of the two Deaf teachers. (Although CIIR would not contact them, I did.) Tomasa Gonzalez writes (interpreted into English by the Bluefields school's interpreter):<BR>
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"...I went to visit the deaf school in Condega a while back, and all my students asked me to come back and teach....Nestor [referring to Nestor Pardo, the CIIR development worker] hired a new hearing teacher to teach them that didn't know sign. She was going to try to teach them through oralism but these poor students just sat there. They didn't know what was going on. All the curriculum that [Nicaraguan Sign Language Projects] had provided (i.e., the SignWriting materials), all went to waste...."<BR>
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</FONT>Claudia Avila writes:<BR>
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"...Nestor and Carlos [Los Pipitos administrator] informed us that the Deaf teachers would now be cooking due to budget cuts....We were the only two Deaf teachers there and no hearing teachers were put to cook....Afterward we had another meeting, in which I told Nestor I was there to teach not cook. He asked to see what I was teaching and then told me that we had a new curriculum and to disregard everything James [Shepard-Kegl from NSLP] had said re: SignWriting and sign language. After Nestor took over, things really changed....If you teach a deaf child sign language, you give them their own language. Afterwards, when they know their language you can teach them Spanish. And they will be able to see how the two languages correspond. Often the orally taught deaf children get made fun of. Reading lips is hard and often misunderstandings happen. But if you have sign language you are able to gesture well with hearing people. In Condega right now there are only hearing teachers. How are the deaf students supposed to learn sign from them? There are not as attentive to their needs. As Deaf teachers, we understand their needs and are better able to teach them. We are better able to engage them and to interact with them as well as serve as language models."<BR>
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Incidentally, Harlan Lane, author of <U>The Mask of Benevolence: Disabling the Deaf Community</U>, contacted Mr. Vasquez via email to complain about the dismantling of the educational program at the Condega Deaf School.<BR>
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Personally, I am outraged that a charitable organization, after funding someone whose ignorance has done such harm to Deaf children, would simply deny any responsibility. I can understand when local administrators with no educational background in Deaf education can perpetuate the prejudicial and paternalistic traditional approaches to schooling Deaf children. I am far less sympathetic when a large foreign based charitable corporation sends a salaried consultant to advise such approaches. And I am appalled that an innovative empowerment program has been quite destroyed by the involvement of such a consultant.<BR>
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Initially, I was inclined to give CIIR the benefit of the doubt. But, their investigation entailed nothing more than interviewing the people who had disempowered the Deaf teachers and students in the first place. Moreover, CIIR continues to fund their development worker. I think this establishes the viewpoint of this organization toward Deaf people, their sign language and SignWriting.<BR>
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I know many of you on the List have encountered similar frustrations, and I just wanted to commiserate. Since CIIR has a very substantial budget, and NSLP (my organization) has effectively no budget at all, there is not really much I can do about this tragic situation.<BR>
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If anyone is interested, Osvaldo Vasquez can be contacted at <FONT FACE="Geneva">osvaldo@ciir.org<BR>
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-- James Shepard-Kegl<BR>
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