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Where we do it > Rwanda - Antonia Eastman

Name: Antonia Eastman
Role: Special Education Resource Trainer, Butare Centre for Deaf and Mute Children
Location: Butare, Rwanda

The International Deaf Children’s Society recently noted that throughout Rwanda, there are negative attitudes towards deaf people and widespread ignorance about deaf people’s abilities. There is also a lack of education facilities to train deaf leaders.

The Butare Centre for Deaf and Mute Children aims to address many of the difficulties children and young adults living with a disability face. Young people go to the centre for 12-14 weeks and are taught in accordance with their level of literacy and numeracy. This includes providing an education as well as encouraging personal development, building good life skills and growing confidence.

VSO volunteer Antonia Eastman went to Butare in October 2005 after a career in teaching that lasted nearly 35 years. ‘I was working in North Wales, in Gwynedd’ Antonia states. ‘My job was fairly varied as were the locations I went to. The children I taught ranged from primary school students to young people on the verge of taking exams.’

A VSO volunteer’s primary goal is to ensure the work they do with partner organisations ensures long-term benefits. This is the aim of one of the projects Antonia is working on – developing a sign language manual. ‘I’m really excited about the sign language manual’ says Antonia ‘the signs used in Kigali are different from Butare and so forth across Rwanda. It’s not so much a dictionary as a manual. It’s something that documents basic sounds which would help standardise the language and raise the profile of the deaf community and of sign language.’

Antonia aims to develop the signs and then have meetings with older adult members of the deaf community to discuss the signs and to decide which is the universally accepted signs. ‘This project is something that will give deaf people a voice, and if we get lots of publicity which I hope we will, it will put the deaf in Rwanda in a much more prominent position. Indirectly it will be empowering and do a bit of capacity building.’

‘The manual and the workshops we’ve run about disabilities are incredibly important. It’s about getting disability to the forefront of the country’s strategic plan. What we want next is to go to two teacher-training colleges, and run afternoon sessions for the students who are about to leave the college. This is so they will become primary school teachers, to try and introduce the idea of disability, both explaining what the disabilities are and maybe discussing the way in which they can include people living with a disability in their class.’

She maintains her understanding of the local education environment by also working in schools. In the local primary school Antonia teaches children who are not deaf, which she sees this as essential to learning about the standard of English and a chance to share best practice with other teachers. She also works with older deaf students at a local secondary school and teachers there, working with them on their sign language skills.

Gregoire Ndayisabe, a teacher at the centre for the deaf where Antonia works is very enthusiastic about the work Antonia has done, ‘She helped us a lot with teaching, and in researching material that can be adapted for deaf children. This year Antonia has done incredible things in developing teaching material. I don’t know how she manages to get such extraordinary things that help the children use language. The language of deaf children comes from what they see. She manages to get images, drawings, colouring books, and many other materials. I can see it personally…but I also see that the centre’s management think her presence is very important here.’

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