Give career training to 100 deaf students in India

Here are some updates as to what has been going on in our school since our last report.

The globalgiving representative in India came to our Center for Career Training of the Deaf on May 31^st and met with organization members to be updated about the progress of the school and discuss how more improvements can be made. The meeting was extremely productive and we hope for a long term and fruitful relationship with them.

We also held a small event on July 23^rd where we distributed school supplies for free to the school students. The students come from poor socio-economic backgrounds and cannot afford to buy them frequently.

We are continuing to teach computer basics such as word, excel, powerpoint, Microsoft paint, email and internet to our students. They are beginners and don’t get enough hands-on time at home practicing the basics. Only one student has a personal laptop where he practices regularly and he is way ahead of the rest of the class. For this reason we have decided to open the school for a couple of hours in the afternoon when the students can come and practice at the center’s computer. This will help to improve their learning curve. The classes are still being held for 2 days a week for 2-3 hours. We don’t charge anything from the students as this may discourage them from attending the school.

Attached are some pictures from the meeting with the gobalgiving representative in India, the school supplies event and our students in class. Hope you enjoy them and thanks for sharing this journey with us.

Links:

• Our shop on Etsy with paintings done by deaf artists

As Robert Crawford stated “Being challenged in life is inevitable, being defeated is optional”. We are facing our fair share of challenges regarding the school. We want to hire a couple of highly qualified teachers who can teach advanced computer courses to the hearing impaired students for couple of days a week and also help in developing a well-planned curriculum of study. Our first challenge is to find such teachers that have the passion and time to give to the students and our second challenge is how we can continue paying them once they are hired. We being a grassroots level organization depend entirely on individual donations which is not steady all the time. With the departure of our previous volunteer teachers, we have hired Suvankar, a graduate from Calcutta University who is teaching computer basics such as word, excel, powerpoint, email and networking to our students. In the following days we shall strive to overcome our challenges as being defeated is not an option for us.

We have opened a library room in our career training school for the deaf starting with 17 donated computer books. We are grateful to our donor for getting those books to us. If you would like to donate a computer book to our library that can help the students learn useful computer skills, please send them at our mailing address at 41-B Sadananda Road, Kolkata 700026 or email us at westbengaldeaf@gmail.com if you would like to have an alternate arrangement made regarding delivery of the books.

We also have a few talented deaf artists whose work we are trying to sell. Please check out the link below and distribute to your friends and family who may be interested. All proceeds from the sales will go to the deaf artists and give their morale a much-needed boost.

Thanks for sharing this journey with us.

Links:

• Our online store of paintings made by deaf artists