Global Foundation auditory-verbal therapists Hannah Eskridge and Lillian Henderson have been working this week at Children’s Hospital 1 with 12 therapists from Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi. They are furthering the expertise of these Vietnamese professionals in developing plans and strategies to help the children make use of hearing technology and develop spoken language.
We are developing and customizing a curriculum for teachers and therapists enrolled in our Vietnam Deaf Education Program that addresses the nuances of the Vietnamese language. We rolled out the curriculum this week and the response from the participants thus far has been positive.
This week’s workshop is focused on vocabulary development and how to set audition, speech, and language goals. Each therapist has been assigned to a family for the week. In the morning, the therapists are executing on lesson plans they developed for their family. The afternoons are devoted to short lectures and planning sessions for the following day’s therapy sessions. It has been fun to watch the creative juices flowing as participants are grasping the process and coming up with innovative ways to help children reach goals while in the midst of play activities.
Over 75% of the Vietnamese participants in this workshop have taken part in the Global Foundation’s Mobile Missions and Summer Training Programs over the past 2 years. They have been demonstrating great progress this week in their acumen and confidence for applying auditory-verbal approaches. It is translating to positive language development outcomes for the children they serve.