WHILE PAPER REPORT OF VIET NAM FOR YEAR 1
Project’s Director: Nguyen, Hoa Thi, MSSE
COMPONENT 1: Formal and Continuing Education
1. Time: October 2021– January 2023
2. Education activity
The project started operating in February 2022. Before that month, due to the strong outbreak of the Global Pandemic COVID-19 in Vietnam (from July 2021), schools following the government’s directive had to be closed for several months. When there was an order from the government that all the schools had to teach online at the beginning of the new school year (September 2021), the center was not able to implement online teaching. There are many reasons such as many families of deaf students do not have a computer or only have one computer, but there were two or three of children in the same family had to study online, so it was difficult to provide enough computer for them; The student’s family did not have the network or living in rural areas do not have enough conditions for online learning…
In October, the center started to teach some subjects online for deaf students because not all subjects can be taught online. In addition, students had to use mobile phones to learn, so it was hard for them to see good pictures, signing from teacher or their classmate; It was not possible to see and interact with the others during class, so the progress of online learning was very slow. Because of these influences, when the center reopened in March 2022, we spent all the time focusing on teaching. trying to complete the program for the school year, so there is no time to invest in other activities.
COMPONENT 2: Transition, Coaching and Support
1. Time: November 2022 – January 2023
2. Activity support for education
On the occasion of NTID’s visit to Vietnam in November 2022, Deaf Grow Project invited three representatives of NTID to visit classrooms in Ho Chi Minh City to create opportunities for young deaf students to meet and interact with foreigners. The project also organized a picnic for deaaf students, some parents and NTID in order to help deaf students had a chance to live with nature, to participate in fun activities outside classroom, and learn some knowledge from nature and life.
In December 2023, the Deaf Grow project also invited an Association Education for All Vietnamese to visit classrooms in Ho Chi Minh City to introduce the activity support for deaf education of Deaf Grow Project.
3. Workshop
On 13 November 2022, the Vietnamese Deaf Grow Project organized a first workshop at the office of Union of Science and Technology Associations in Ho Chi Minh City. This workshop attracted 100 attendees with mostly deaf people from Ho Chi Minh City and some other provinces around Ho Chi Minh City area such as Dong Nai, Vung Tau, Binh Duong, Binh Phuoc, Tay Ninh … A few teachers and parents of deaf people. There are also 3 foreign guests from NTID (Thomastine Sarchet, Mary Lamb, Nashiru Abdulai) who are also members of the project in the US. The workshop took place in an informal atmosphere. The workshop took half a day and took place in two forms: offline and online since there are three participants could not come to the avenue.
The workshop includes three main sections: 1) introduce the Deaf Employment Project, 2) introduce 4 deaf models who have successful life: Nguyen trung Dung, Nguyen Hoang Lam, (from Ho Chi Minh City), Dinh Ho Song Ha from Phu Yen (central of VN) and Nguyen Thai Thanh from Ha Noi. They have succeeded in various fields such as teaching, teaching sign language, baking and barbering; 3) disccusion.
After the presentations, the participants actively asked questions related to the project as well as questions for the role models. The questions revolved around the experiences of these people and the support the project will have to support deaf people who want to find a job.
4. Field experience
On the occasion of the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, the project collaborated with the Vietnam Association for Education for All to organize a 1-day experience trip at a model farm in Ho Chi Minh City for 30 students in primary level of the Center for Studying and Promoting Deaf Culture. There were also 7 teachers and 6 parents to assist the tour and take care for young students.
This field trip aims to provide an opportunity for the young students to get acquainted with the gardening, farming, animal husbandry and fishing of farmers in the countryside. The scientific knowledge about agriculture was transmitted through games and hand-on activities that made the children excitement and joy. Through this field trip, the students learned some new vocabulary, understood more about work and life.
5. Output Materials
There are four output materails for this component: one brochure of the workshop, one PPT of the presentation to introduce the project, one video of the workshop, and one article summary about the field experience tour. All was possted in the website of deafgrow.vn
Component 3: Partnership & Alliance Building
1. Time: August 2022
2. Workability Asia Conference
Ms. Hoa attended a conference of Asian countries with the theme “Jobs and employment of people with disabilities in a disprutive world” in Thailand. This is the first international conference that the director of Deaf Grow in Viet Nam participated in the first year of the project in order to create a network of relationships with neighboring countries in the region, to learn experience. in the field of professional development, employment for the deaf.
The conference took place over 2 days in Pataya. Most of the delegates were from Thailand. The conference took place in two forms: offline and online since some delegates were unable to come due to the impact of COVID 19. Many studies are mainly about employment, reporting on the typical achievements of people with mobility disabilities or visual probem. Reports or studies on the field of the deaf people are still limitted.
3. Output Materials
One short article about this conference was post on the website of deafgrow.vn
Component 4: Research & Data Management
1. Time: November 2021 – May 2022
2. Summary the process
In component 4 of the project, in the first 6 months of the first year, the center focuses on these works below:
– Develop 2 questionnaires for the first 2 surveys of the project: deaf employees and employers. (November 2021- December 2021)
– Select a team to conduct the survey: explain the work, assign tasks. (December 2021)
– Publish the survey online and invited hearing and deaf people to participants in the survey (January 2022 – March 2022 – Collect data, analyse the results and write the report (April 2022 – May 2022)
3. Explanation the process
For the first time conducting these surveys, Ms, Hoa had a discussion with the project partners (NTID and SDEAS) to draft a general questionnaire. Then Ms. Hoa reviewed and adjusted to suit the situation and language of the Vietnamese people; translated into Vietnamese. After that Ms. Hoa recruited a research team and had a meeting with them to disseminate the purpose and requirements of the survey; explain how to do it and assign it to each member.
Ms. Hoa asked all deaf members in the team to do this survey to make sure they understood and were able to answer the questions on the survey so they can help to explain to other deaf participants when they take the survey. Ms. Hoa also asked 2 deaf people to make the video of the questionnaire of the survey by signing and send it to the group for checking and give feedback to ensure that the questions are signed correctly and clearly before possting on the web.
The survey of deaf employees used Google Form and the survey of employers used Monkey website. Data of employers was collected in one month and the data of deaf employees was collected in 3 months. 113 deaf people responded to the survey and 24 employers responded to the survey. The detail information of these survey will be included in a separate report.
4. Some notes
In the survey of deaf employment, we want to include two groups of participants: deaf people (those with jobs and people without jobs) and employers (those who have deaf employees and those who don’t have deaf employees yet).
For deaf participants we don’t have any specific number in mind when we distribute the survey. We only wanted to encourage as many deaf people to participate in the survey as possible because this is our first time doing this survey in Viet Nam and we want to learn about the job needs of deaf people. Thus, the more deaf people participate in the survey, the better for us.
For the employer, this is also the first time we do research related to employment of deaf people. We don’t know many companies or organizations that employ deaf people, so we only sent out the survey to places we knew as a pilot survey.
5. Output Materials
The report of deaf employment research
Component 5: Website and Information Development
1. Time: November 2022 – January 2023
After signing the contract with the Website company in November 2022, and more than 3 months of preparation for the website’s form and categories, the website of Deaf Grow Viet Nam basically completed and launched its website in Febuary 2023.
The target of this website is to provide information related deaf people, deaf society, deaf education, and deaf employment to hearing and deaf societies in Viet Nam and oversea (may be). Thus, the articles, information on the website will be presented in three languages: Vietnamese, English and Ho Chi Minh City Sign Language. But up to this day, the project is only able to present some information in three languages, some in two languages due to the limited of human resources and time.
Within 2 months, after DeafGrow website posted on the network of web until the time of Annual report in April, deafgrow.vn has 24 items includes informative articles, videos about the project, its initial activities, knowledge related to education and employment for the deaf, some typical examples of deaf people…And the website has nearly 4.000 views.
2. The output marterials
The output material of this component is the website of the project and here is the link of the website: https://deafgrow.vn/
Component 6: Project Management
1. Monthly leadership meetings:
Every first Tuesday of the month, Ms. Hoa participates in the monthly leadership meetings between 3 members of DEAFGROW: NTID, SDEAS, and the Center for Studying and Promoting Deaf Culture. The meeting normally lasts for 2 hours, sometimes longer. Each member will report on their activities, difficulties or problems they have encountered in the past month, the progress of activities and share experiences at work. Thereby, each member is updated with information about the general activities of the project as well as the activities of each member. Then they discuss together what needs to be done in the month or quarter of the project.
Beside that sometimes, Ms Hoa also has extra meetings online with Thomastine, or Woodward (advisor for Vietnamese side) to discuss about other issues related to Viet Nam only.
2. Quarterly Business Meetings
It’s not able to do it in the first year.
3. Six-month Progress and Final Report
Ms. Hoa makes these reports according to the deadlines and requirements of the project manager (Tommie)
4. Output Materials
The white paper report of the first year.
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