Beauty Beyond Speech

In 2019, Our Beauty Beyond Speech (BBS) Project was scaled up and was carried out in four Deaf schools in Lagos, reaching out to over 300 deaf girls. The outreaches largely featured workshops on how to avoid and report domestic and sexual abuse. Students were taught using posters, photocards and videos of people’s experiences. Students also received sanitary pads and other gifts during all the outreaches. With the little funds we received through GlobalGiving donations and other in-kind donations, we were able to put up a series of formidable outreaches.

Taking Lagos as a kind of pilot, we have decided to extend the Beauty Beyond Speech project to Jos in Plateau State, Imo and Abuja, while we try out a variety of strategies in line with what works for each place. In Jos, we would ask the deaf girls to write poems and articles, which narrates their possible experiences or other people’s; those who might want to represent theirs in drawings and paintings would also be allowed. Important people in the community such as politicians, the media, clergy, etc., will be invited to these outreaches to watch and encourage the students. Before the outreaches, our BBS Team would first coach the students how to craft and present their stories, they would work with the interpreting teachers.

In Imo, the BBS will take the shape of motivational speeches and workshops for the students. This was tried in the Secondary School for the Deaf in Imo State during our last Triple Action Project (TAP), 2019 and it was successful. In Abuja, we hope to incorporate the BBS Project in the Deaf Literacy Development Project, which is focused on developing deaf students in reading and debating.

With the continued reports of domestic and sexual abuse of deaf girls in the country and the government’s indifferent towards deaf affairs, we believe that deaf girls in Nigeria need the BBS project now more than ever and so the project also needs funding now more than ever. We hope to reach a minimum of 600 students in 2020 and collect as much personal experiences as we can with the aim of channeling our findings to the appropriate authorities.

In addition to the collection of personal experiences, we hope to use BBS project as a medium to empower deaf girls in Nigeria. We will do this through essay writing competitions, and other talent exhibitions that we plan to incorporate in the project, whereby the winner(s) will be handsomely awarded scholarships. The first BBS was of course lunched on this premise, but the essay was done by hearing people. After that we decided to make it a Deaf affairs.