Making The Most Of The Moment

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Helping A Special Deaf Child

Hi Friends! This is my first blog, and I'm excited to finally learn how to navigate the technical art of blogging. I'm in the midst of helping an unusual deaf child, Josselin Garcia, learn how to speak, read and write -- not only in English, but in Spanish. She came here from Honduras with NO communication skills. Thanks to a generous sponsor, she has spent her last three years here learning how to communicate through Cued Speech. (Cued Speech is a visual/oral method, which uses hand signals to represent sound and aid in lip-reading.) Her sponsor family is almost out of money, and I'm organizing a brainstorming session among friends to help fund her education for the next four years. She'll be attending a private Catholic school in the fall. Any ideas of people or corporations that would be willing to help pay for her education, speech therapist, and once-a-year trip to visit her family? Her visa runs out in four years, so she needs to learn to communicate in Spanish well. (Her small town in Honduras has NO instruction for deaf children!) Thanks for your helpful ideas!