Helen, Deafax’s Chief Executive recently returned from a holiday in Barbados. Lucky her! However, it wasn’t all play. She met up with a friend who lives out there, Peter Boos and his wife Jan, Peter has set up the Aspire Foundation. www.aspirebarbados.org and told her all about the latest developments. Peter also organised lunch at the Yacht Club where Helen met with up with Bonnie Leonce and Nikita. Bonnie is a qualified American Sign Language Interpreter on the island and one of the many things she does is support a young Bajan called Nikita who is deaf with her studies. You can read more about what Bonnie does in the Community Interview section of this Newsletter. Helen also visited Yasmi
We’ve recently started delivering one of the most challenging training programmes for schools in our 30-year history. It’s called ‘Prevent 2B Safe’ and is part of a high-profile national counter-terrorism and security initiative. Deafax has developed these anti-radicalisation training workshops for deaf pupils. We know that extremists target the vulnerable and those who are ‘different’ and they exploit social media to recruit young people. The grooming techniques used are increasingly sophisticated – empathising with an individual's sense of isolation, rejection or antipathy with society, encouraging them to cut themselves off from family and friends. We provide a safe, deaf-friendly envi
As with people from all walks of life, deaf society enjoys many different social and cultural structures. It is only relatively recently that these unique approaches and conventions have begun to be explored and understood. As we strive to learn from and accommodate the deaf community, these all-important memes have become part of the way we communicate with and recognise the choices of deaf people and those with hearing loss. One area that we still have a lot to learn about is how deaf people define their identity within the deaf and hearing worlds. The terms big D and little d are often used to describe those who choose to remain in the deaf community and those who actively associate with
