The Global Foundation For Children With Hearing Loss is celebrating its 3-year anniversary this month. It has been a wonderful journey. We are grateful to everyone who has followed our work and the people and organizations that have contributed time, talents, and donations to support this cause.
Our Vietnam Deaf Education Program is a unique and integrated approach to empower teachers, medical teams, other professionals and families with the expertise to help young children with hearing loss develop listening and spoken language. Our model is designed to reach each person in the child’s network of support. It offers Summer Training, Mobile Missions, and Hearing Aid Distribution initiatives. Thirty-eight schools for the deaf across 20 Vietnam provinces and two pediatric hospitals in Ho Chi Minh City are participating. Curriculum development and training are conducted by teams comprised of our 30 professional volunteers from across the United States, Canada, Hong Kong, and Singapore.
The Summer Training component features a multi-year curriculum conducted at Thuan An Center in Vietnam that covers audiology, speech therapy, early intervention, and auditory verbal education. Our Mobile Missions complement the summer training with on-site visits to participating locations in our Vietnam Deaf Education Program. During the Mobile Missions, our auditory-verbal deaf education professionals help teachers and therapists implement the lessons learned from the summer program in their own classrooms. We provide on-site audiology training to school staff that monitor the children’s hearing and hearing technology. We provide counsel to local parents. We offer training to hospital medical teams. During both the Summer Training and Mobile Missions, we fit hearing aids on children from low-income families and we involve the children’s technicians and education staff so they can support the children after we leave.
The Global Foundation’s Vietnam Deaf Education program touches parents, teachers, medical teams, therapists, and hearing aid dispensers. It offers training across disciplines (audiology, speech, auditory-verbal education, early intervention), on a large scale (38 schools, 2 hospitals in 20 provinces, over 500 participants and families to date). Because we are collaborating with the Vietnamese, our programs are customized to their needs. And, by working with the same group of participants over time in this multi-year effort, the participants build on their knowledge. They share their learning with each other, making the benefits exponential and sustainable.
Our Vietnam Deaf Education Program has turned in significant results. In 20 short months, we have:
• Conducted 2 Summer Training programs
• Executed 2 Mobile Missions
• Trained 190 teachers and therapists
• Trained 120 doctors and other professionals
• Counseled 220 families
• Reached 38 schools in 20 provinces
• Engaged 2 hospitals
• Fit 200 hearing aids on young children
Our Vietnam Deaf Education Program has benefitted over 900 children with hearing loss.
Here are links to two videos that highlight our projects in 2012:
Summer Training Program: http://bit.ly/nCS1dr
March Mobile Mission: http://bit.ly/GWCjzu
As we move into 2013, we will continue our work in Vietnam. We are also exploring expansion of our model to two additional countries that have requested our support. It is an exciting time at the Global Foundation. I hope that you will continue to follow our blog as we launch our fourth year of operation. For more information, please check out our website at: www.childrenwithhearingloss.org. Thank you again so much for your continued interest and support of our work.
