Three weeks ago we had graduation in Phnom Penh for our education and job training students in the Deaf Development Programme (DDP). I spoke briefly, mainly thanking the parents who allowed their deaf children to come to DDP.
Deafness is not understood in Cambodia. Commonly, parents think their deaf children are “crazy” and unteachable and see them as a burden on the family. They think it is a wasted effort to send them to a school program like ours. That reluctance is made worse because the deaf youth have great economic value for dirt-poor rural families. The deaf son takes care of the cow and plants rice and the daughter helps with the planting and also cooks, cleans and cares for the baby so the mother can sell vegetables in the market.
Education in the U.S. is taken for granted. Everyone goes. It’s the law. And there are good academic and vocational programs offered.
Not so in Cambodia. In areas with no schools, Buddhist monks in the wats (pagodas) will offer some education, but only to boys. Teachers are poorly trained and expect bribes if students want to pass. COVID closed schools for a year and a half, but then students were just passed on to the next grade.
Education for deaf students is even worse. There are an estimated 61,000 profoundly deaf people in Cambodia. The first deaf school and our Deaf Development Programme were both started in 1997. Now, after 27 years, we have found fewer than 4,000 of those 60,000+ people. The 4,000 have received some education, but the majority of Cambodian deaf people today have never met another deaf person and are standing in a rice field thinking they are the only deaf person in the world.
Graduations are an important step in a person’s acquiring maturity and independence. They are especially important for deaf youth in Cambodia. All their life, most have been seen as a problem for the family. They can help with household chores, but they can’t go to school, are never affirmed and praised for an accomplishment, never recognized for achievement. Their families cannot even speak to them because the family has no sign language.
But when they come to DDP, they acquire sign language and the ability to communicate and express themselves for the first time in their lives. And, at the DDP graduation, they are praised and honored for their accomplishments, the first time that has happened in their life.
The downside of the DDP graduation is that it may be the high point of their lives. After being with us for three years, learning, communicating, making friends, expressing their thoughts and feelings, they graduate and return to their villages — where no one knows sign language. Now they are aware that they are smart and capable; they have had the experience of sharing their lives with others. But all that comes to an end back in the village where no one can talk to them. In one sense their situation is worse than before they came to DDP because now they know what they can do and there is no opportunity for them.
The Deaf Development Programme tries to keep in touch with the graduates and promote activities in the rural areas so they can gather with others like them, but our budget has been cut by 60% as major donors left Cambodia. Now we have less money and reduced staff and minimal outreach. We do what we can but it is not nearly what is needed.
Father Charles Dittmeier, a priest of the Archdiocese of Louisville, is the co-director of the Deaf Development Programme in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and pastor of the English-speaking parish there. Follow his journey at parish-without-borders.org.
