Celebration of International Disability Day

To prepare for International Disability Day, three of the SHG prepared power point presentations on the Arabic Sign Language Alphabet and numbers. These were used as a tool for their play for the celebration of International Disability Day held on Friday 5^th December in El Buss. After teaching the alphabet in sign language, members of the audience were asked to introduce themselves in sign language, say their age and what they liked. It was interesting to see the difference in those who knew already and those who didn’t. The activity raised the awareness and sparked and interest for those who had not previously known the alphabet.

The event started with a clown who entertained and danced with the children.

They were all delighted to interact with him, and their day got better when they went off to join the activities planned by the community for them. There was face painting, colouring in, pasta art and more. To add a twist to the day and raise awareness, each child had a partner, and they would take it in turns at being blindfolded for one activity and having their partner lead them, or at having their hands tied behind their back in the next activity and instructing their partner what they would like done for them.

The older group started their session with a discussion about a jet ski race that all participants except one, pulled out of because of heavy fog. The one who didn’t pull out was blind, so it made no difference to him. This sparked a discussion about abilities and was a good awareness raising tool. Following is the link to the British Red Cross website with the English version of the Jet ski lesson plan, and attached is the Arabic Translation.Jet Ski Arabic

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The next activity for the older group was a maths competition given and answered in sign language after being taught the alphabet. The participants were very eager to communicate in sign language and a bit frustrated by the lack of ease of answering. The event was a good awareness raiser and now, 6 of the participants will take the activities back to their communities to work on awareness raising there.

The SHG has a break now for Eid and Christmas, but will be back in the new year with more activities to raise awareness on the Right to Education for Children with Disabilities.

International Disability Day

Photos of the Arabic alphabet in sign language were taken today by two pairs of helpful hands which will feature on this website. They were taken for two reasons:

1: To add to the website for people interested in Arabic to learn

2: To use as a teaching tool, first of all for the celebration of International Disability Day on the 3^rd December and for the SHG to use in the future as a teaching tool.

Our helpful hands also made a short video of numbers and the days of the week.

As the parents of the SHG prefer that their children’s pictures are not published on the web, a small toy was used to show how to ‘sign’ the days of the week, as the hands need to be close to the face. This toy will continue to help us as we add extra sign language each week.

After the photography session, the rest of the group met to organise themselves to participate in the celebration of International Disability Day.

Their first activity will be a short skit of a classroom in which the students are learning sign language. They will use the photos taken to assist them and at the end ask members of the audience to introduce themselves in sign language as they will have learnt from watching the play.

There second activity, when the audience splits into two groups of children and youth, will be a more in depth teaching session of sign language to the youth in the activity. They will also facilitate a maths competition given and answered in sign language.

Finally, the will participate with the other youth in a discussion highlighting the capabilities of people with special needs, which will be hosted by our Supporting Committee of parents.

Check out the website www.itsourright.blogspot.com next week for an animated clip of Arabic Sign Language.

Famous people with disabilities

On Wednesday 19^th November the SHG met to research famous people with disabilities to make a poster about them to raise awareness of the abilities of people with disabilities. The members of the SHG are still learning their way around computers and search engines, but all succeeded in finding a picture and some information to email me on their ‘famous person’, including the name, type of disability and reason that they are famous.

A member of the inclusive committee suggested that we put up bill boards in each of the 10 schools that we are targeting in the South and each month put up a poster with the picture, name, disability and achievement of a famous person with a disability.

Together as a team of committees, the future looks bright for raising awareness on the ‘Right to Education for children with disabilities.’

Planning for International Disability Day

The SHG met to plan for what we would do to celebrate the International Disability Day. We will work together with the community committees to distribute brochures and posters on Wednesday 3^rd December and on the 5^th December, hold an event to include children both with and without disabilities..

The first task was to plan for a poster that we will put up in shops, schools and the community. We plan to introduce ourselves to schools at this point and to set appointments to meet with schools for further research in the coming year.

The SHG agreed that they would make a poster with a border of pictures to represent different disabilities.

• They will put the date and a big question mark to draw attention to the date.
• Next they will put the name of the day and a small definition about what is a disability.
• They will then put pictures of famous people with disabilities so that they can draw attention to the abilities of people.
• They will also find pictures for Paralympics and use them on the poster.
• Finally they will write about the rights of people with disabilities.

The group agreed to meet the following Wednesday to research this at an internet café. To ensure that research topics are distributed in a fair way, tasks will be put in a hat and each member will research whatever they draw.

We also agreed that each week, on member would be responsible for updating the blog about our meetings and activities. Aida wrote for the last two activities and Wael volunteered to write for today’s meeting.

So, keep your eye out for updates from the group on www.itsourright.blogspot.com

Community Committees to facilitate access to school and employment for children with disabilities

On Friday 31st Oct, the SHG introduced themselves to the two committees formed to raise community awareness on the abilities of people with disabilities and to help with transition from school to the work place.

The SHG did this in the form of a power point presentation, explaining the activities they had done in the past, and this, their current project. The presentation included the short films that they had made and was well received by the groups.

With these activities completed, we are now ready to begin on with our plan to research the situation for children with disabilities in schools in Sur.

Blogging workshops with Social Media Exchange

Friday 17th was our last workshop (for the time being) with Social Media Exchange. Despite various technical difficulties such as alternating power cuts and loss of internet connectivity, the SHG learnt how to set up their own blog, post, add photos and link their blogs to other blogs. They now have their own personal blogs to use, and will use www.itsourright.blogspot.com for our work project.

A big thank you to Social Media Exchange for all of the support and the offer of a follow up session once the SHG have their blogs up and running and need extra technical support.

Training the group on Windows Media Player

On Friday 31st November the Self Help Group (SHG) will present its aims to two other committees that are helping them. The two committees are made up of parents and one group is focusing on inclusive education while the other is working on the transition of youth with disabilities from school to the workplace.

Each committee will present themselves and their aims with a powerpoint presentation, so the SHG met today to start creating theirs.

Three members of the SHG came to the centre early to learn how to use photos and music in Windows Movie Maker to make a short film. With two laptops, they were shown on one, how to put together a short presentation, while simultaneously putting together their own on the second computer. They also wrote down the procedure step by step. After the demonstration and hands on practice, they were asked to make another one on their own. Following their notes, they successfully created their own presentation.

This was only the first step. When the rest of the group arrived, we set up an LCD to project the computer screen onto the wall. Tahani then visually demonstrated the steps to the rest of the group who were working concurrently on computers, Aida wrote each step on the board for the others to copy and Khodor assisted those who needed help.




By the end of the hour, we had 3 presentations on activities that the SHG has participated in and all of the group left the room with a sense of satisfaction of having either taught others or having learnt something new.

Through these kinds of activities we hope to facilitate learning, so that the SHG have the skills and confidence to train others.

The first step to creating a blog

Nobody ever said that the journey of a thousand miles would be without its bumps........

and we have already hit a few, ranging from internet connections crashing, email passwords being forgotten and most challengingly, the sign language translator not being able to make it to the workshop. The trainers from Social Media Exchange rallied to the challenge though, projecting a word document on to a blank screen and typing what they needed to communicate.

With an idea of the possibilities of the WWW, the SHG got together to start using Google as a search engine to research how to define disabilities, different kinds of disabilities and the ‘Right to Education’. We also sat together to nut out the aims of our blog and with this prepared, met with Social Media Exchange again, to learn how to set up our group blog and post to it.

Social Media Exchange gave some great examples in their presentation of people with disabilities who had started blogs and even some who were making money out of them. This interested the SHG a lot, as they idea of your work being a blog appealed to them.

The students were asked to come up with a name for the blog, so they each put forward an idea and voted on it. The final decision was, ‘It’s my right, don’t ignore it!’ With this name, we set up a blog and sent an invitation to each students’ gmail to allow them to post messages to the blog.

The blog was being projected on a wall, and it was great to see their faces light up when their self introduction came on line.

You can find their blog in Arabic at www.itsourright.blogspot.com

Following are the blog planning sheets we used.

Microsoft Word - 3.Blogstrategy

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Microsoft Word - 4.Blogstrategy-Ar

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Right to education for children with disabilities

Today the Self Help Group met to discuss the idea for new project for the first time. So just what is the idea?

A Self Help Group (SHG) of youth who have graduated from Nabil Badran Centre (NBC), a school for children with disabilities in Sur and some beneficiaries of Woman’s Humanitarian Organisation (WHO), will research just what is ‘The right to education for children with disabilities.’ They will define what a disability is considered to be, identify types of disabilities and consider how these disabilities would affect children attending school. They will assess the current situation in the Sur area and report back through the medium of a blog. These workshops will be run by Social Media Exchange: http://www.socialmediaexchange.org/

After assessing the situation, they will consider methods of raising awareness about the Right to Education and implement these ideas in schools and the community, at all times reporting back on the processes they went through to achieve this.

In this way we hope to share our ideas for you to use in your communities.

After the initial assessment stages, the SHG will look for support agencies that can offer post graduation assistance to children with disabilities.

As the blog develops in Arabic, it will be followed by an English language site which will also offer links and tips for teachers teaching children with disabilities.

This is the grand idea.

So we started with a survey to see just how internet savvy the group of 4 girls and 4 boys, each with hearing and related speech impairments were.

Following is the survey in English and Arabic
Microsoft Word - 1.How Often Do You Use the Internet

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Microsoft Word - 1.ArabicHow Often Do You Use the Internet

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To my surprise, the 4 boys had email accounts, but only one of the girls did, and she didn’t really know how to use it. Nobody knew anything about using search engines or chat rooms, much less about social networking or blogging. Having all done a training course on ‘Photoshop’ in the past and all having completed typing courses as a part of vocational training, none of them are strangers to computers, just the internet.

Convinced that the workshops, the research, the communication and online skills that the youth will develop along the way will be a big asset to give them a voice in a digital world, I am even more enthusiastic to get started and begin sharing with them another way to communicate with the world that they live in.

At the end of the session, we agreed to meet the following week to

1 Discuss the importance of maintaining privacy on the net and of internet security in general.
2 Open a gmail account
3 Use gmail chat
4 Use a search engine for research and methods of checking how accurate the information is.

Worksheet for Self Help Group (SHG)
Microsoft Word - 2.Worksheet for Self Supporting Committee

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A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step and we have taken it.

Please join us on the ride and feel free to offer us your comments and advice on raising awareness on ‘The Right to Education for children with disabilities.’