Building Relationships for GBCZ Our founder Francis Phiri was fortunate to attend the 54th Biennial Conference of the National Association of the Deaf in Hartford, CT July 3-7th. This was a great opportunity for Give Back to Community Zambia to build relationships with other Deaf organizations and Deaf educators. During the Conference, Francis attended numerous workshops on Deaf education topics and had a great opportunity to meet personally with the Executive Director and founder of the Zambian Deaf Youth and Women organization in Kite, Zambia. Mr. Musukwa attended the NAD Conference as part of his tour in USA to build awareness of the needs of the deaf community in Zambia. Francis and Mr. Musukwa continued their discussion about the upcoming GBCZ sponsored Deaf Education Summit to be held in Zambia later this summer. That conference will focus on Deaf education collaboration and the struggle for social justice and equality for Deaf persons in Zambia. Francis was also building on the GBCZ relationships with other Deaf organizations like IDEAL, Internation Deaf Education Advocacy and Leadership. He met with IDEAL President and Founder Isidore Niyongabo to discuss details for the Zambian Summit event this summer. IDEAL is one of our co-sponsors for this event. Here is what Francis had to say about the NAD Conference: I was overwhelmed by the response about GBCZ and my personal story! It was one of the best conferences I've ever attended. I was inspired to see my childhood friend from Zambia, Frank, meet so many Deaf leaders, teachers and educators. I was able to attend different workshops for example advocating for deaf rights, access to education and interpreters, how to improve interpreting, how to improve access to services to incarcerated deaf people, how to improve access to mental health services for the deaf and hard of hearing, and much more! We will be taking all that we learned here at the US conference and utilizing and sharing it to improve and educate in Zambia.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |