Help Deaf Children learn to read and write

Argentina is experiencing a critical economic situation with increasing levels of poverty that affects girls and boys from vulnerable families even more. Within this scenario, civil society organizations are urged to strengthen support. We NEED your collaboration to help deaf children. 

In Canales we work hard in order to guarantee that children and adolescents have access to literature and culture in its varied expressions, and for this purpose we expanded the Videobook platform by adding  two new categories: Legends and Poetry.

For this project we partner with the Libros y Casas (Books and Houses) Program of the Argentinean National Ministry of Culture* whose slogan perfectly shows the reason for our synergy: “Being able to exercise the right to read opens the door to other rights, expands universes, it allows us to access the stories of others and recognize our own.”

Deaf children and adolescents have few experiences of accessing literature in their language, Argentine Sign Language. That is one of the reasons why our projects seek to offer opportunities to enjoy reading in all its formats and genres, in the hands of diverse readers and with relevant themes for different ages. But not only that: we also focus on the literary productions of the deaf community and on motivating them to tell their own stories, the ones of their community, as we did in this year's Literary Festival and in the 5th LSA Storytelling Contest in 2021.

Stories from here and there

The legends that we presented are Pedro y el lobo (Peter and the Wolf) and The Land Without Evil: the first one from European literature called “universal”, the other originated from the oral stories of one of the native tribes of Argentina, the Guaraníes. Both legends are enriching by allowing access to the culture and worldviews of diverse communities. For the second example, we added versions of complementary texts that contextualize that legend. These titles offer reading opportunities to girls and boys of various ages as they are also part of our collection for teenagers.

Poetry and the challenge of interpretation

As we have already pointed out on other occasions, Spanish and Argentine Sign Language are completely independent languages (as are all sign languages and oral languages that are used in the same territory throughout the world). Building the bridge from what is said in one language to the other is not an easy task, especially since the aesthetic charge is essential in poetry. The team of interpreters, deaf advisors and readers of this project had faced this great challenge with the conviction that all readers have the right to encounter the expressive power, emotions and experiences of those who write poetry.

In this case, poems were chosen from the anthology “Rhymed Animals and Not So Much”, intended for early readers and written by renowned national authors. With these titles, the www.videolibros.org platform already reached 89 titles read in 4 different sign languages.

Deaf children need access to culture and education. JOIN our programs, to prevent them from falling into a disadvantaged destiny by providing them with cultural and educational opportunities!

* Libros y Casas is a program of the National Directorate of Cultural Training dependent on the Secretariat of Cultural Management of the Ministry of Culture of the Argentine Nation that since 2007 has delivered more than 1,800,000 books to family and community libraries that accompany the plans of state housing. To this end, it has compiled books aimed at all ages with titles by more than 15 Argentine authors from a wide variety of genres. This library has a digital public free access  version with a chapter made up of the various accessible versions. Canales Asociación Civil has been in charge of the versions in Argentine Sign Language as can be seen in the links below.

Links:

• Libros y Casas proyect
• Leyends in LSA on the Platform of the Ministry of Education
• Poetry in LSA on the Platform of the Ministry of Education