Please help save the SCCD

Writing for SIGNews, I always look for the opportunity to cover deaf education in Africa. This is a part of the world where deaf education is SERIOUSLY lacking, and it is very close to my heart, because I hear the stories and see the photos and it just makes me want to do SOMETHING to help the efforts to educate deaf children in this developing country.

Yesterday was my deadline with SIGNews to turn in just such a story. I spent over a week trying to contact my source, only to finally phone them up and learn he was in Africa right now and couldn't be reached. There was, however, someone else available to help me with the story. She was a part of the Global Deaf Connection, the organization responsible for opening up the very school in the Congo which was facing being shut down. My story is about their fundraising efforts to save the school. I also talked about the school itself, as well as the children. Just looking at the photos of the children learning in this school moved me. If I was wealthy, I'd donate the money they needed to save this school (according to one letter I received, they need to raise $10,000 to save the school). But, writers aren't rich. Well, the UNKNOWN writers, anyway. *scoffs* So all I could do, since I WAS in a position to do something, was write about it. SIGNews is not a paper with low distribution; it's international, appearing as far away as England, Turkey, Spain, Portugal, Canada and Mexico. I can only hope someone in a financial position to save this school will read this story and do something.

Posting about it on my blog is a way of doing something, too. I don't think I have many reades here. I doubt anyone reads this. But here it is. If I could just reach out to one person in the world who can help save this school from being shut down, it'll be worth more than a thousand bylines in The New York Times. Or anywhere, really.

Please see http://www.deafconnection.org/index.php?page=dem_of_congo for more information.