Living Mission — Fullness of life

Father Charles Dittmeier

We had a graduation ceremony at the Deaf Development Programme on Dec. 26 for our deaf education students, job-skills trainees and hearing people learning sign language. It was originally scheduled for Dec. 25 (a work day here) but we postponed it a day so I would not have to leave early for Mass on Christmas Day.

It was a really special occasion. In the most general terms, it marked the end of a second major step for our deaf students. The first significant step was when they first came to the Deaf Development Programme as young adults, usually 18 to 21 years old. They had grown up without language, isolated in their families and society but had been brought to DDP and began to acquire language and education with us. Their lives changed immeasurably.

The second big step was finishing two years of non-formal education and a year of job training and then graduating. Acquiring some academic learning and means to support themselves was certainly an important milestone in their lives.

In more specific terms, though, this graduation was special. One distinctive aspect was the participation of parents this year. Often, parents of deaf youth do not want them to come for education and job training. The parents themselves may not be educated, and young deaf sons and daughters are able-bodied and are valuable assets for planting and harvesting the rice crop, taking care of the cow and assisting at home with younger siblings, which enables a parent to sell vegetables in the market. The deaf youth make a significant financial contribution to supporting the family, even though they have no education.

But this year a number of the parents came for the graduation and were genuinely proud of their sons and daughters for their academic achievement. It was so satisfying for me to see the parents interacting with their children like this and insisting on photos with them and their teachers in a way that wasn’t so common in other years.

Then, too, it was so pleasing to see the deaf young adults so happy to have completed this part of their lives with other deaf people. Before DDP they had never had friends because they had no language. Now they had real, genuine friends, loving, caring relationships they had not known before. Now they have an acceptance of themselves as worthwhile friends, as good and productive human beings, as valuable parts of the community, rather than as problems for the family to deal with.

The graduation had an excitement, an expression, an interaction that the students could never have imagined when they were first brought to DDP two or three years ago. At that point, they had no language. None. At age 18 or 19, they had never spoken to a human being, not even their parents or brothers and sisters. They were frightened at being left at DDP, an unknown place, by their parents. 

Now they are part of a community and can envision a future for themselves. They really don’t know how much they don’t know, but they are on their way to becoming full people. They are full of life and hope.

They are experiencing more of what Jesus had in mind when he said he had come so that we might have the fullness of life.

The past two years have been extremely difficult. Maryknoll ended its presence in Cambodia and stopped funding the Deaf Development Programme. Then an Australian Catholic donor group changed direction and stopped funding disabilities and ended their funding to us. We had to terminate 55 staff and close two centers.  

We now work on a much-reduced scale, but the graduation experience affirmed how what we do is so valuable and how it can give real life and hope to some of God’s children.

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.

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