Seychelles represented at 4th DeafNET Africa Conference |01 October 2016
Two Seychellois with hearing impairment – Shana David and Murielle Joubert – represented Seychelles at the 4th DeafNET Africa Conference.
This year the conference was held at the Premier Hotel in Johannesburg, South Africa from September 26-30.
The 4th DeafNET Conference focused on education for the deaf, more precisely ‘Deaf education: Empowering deaf persons in Africa through knowledge’.
Miss David, who currently works with hearing impaired students at the Au Cap school, said that the conference was a good platform for her to meet other deaf teachers and leaders to share and exchange their respective experiences and knowledge.
On her part Ms Joubert noted that the 4th DeafNET Africa was her very first participation in such a conference, adding she was very excited to get acquainted with African leaders.
This year participants at the DeafNET Africa conference worked to advocate and promote the use of sign language. The target is that sign languages will become a tutoring language used by sign language users on all level of education. This goal is indeed well fitted for the two Seychellois participants as for instance Ms Joubert has been much involved in the process to create a dictionary for sign language.
Another objective of the conference was to gather and distribute knowledge that will empower educators of the deaf and to equip deaf learners with the knowledge, social competencies, and vocational skills that are equal to their hearing peers.
Through the conference the existing network between those concerns was expanded and strengthened so that more awareness would be raised in both public and private sectors concerning the abilities and rights of the hearing impaired community. This of course includes access to equal education for all and on all level.
To further improve networking there was also the setting up of the DeafNET Africa Network committee to replace the Africa Contact Group for Mental Health and Deafness.
At the end of the conference a resolution urging countries/communities to improve the socio-economic state of deaf person and their families was approved. The session also featured a declaration that will serve as a guiding document for the four coming years to engage public/private sectors to promote the human rights of deaf people in Africa.
S. M. Barbé