BODHI trains
the trainer: Deafness in Nepal
New photos
Left: Ms Kiran Singh, Sangeetha Basnet and Dr Jane Stephens (Karunamati); centre: Sangeetha; right: Sangeetha and her father. Photos taken July 2008 and courtesy Dr Jane Stephens
Dr Sonal Singh is Associate Professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He was originally from Darjeeling, India and has
strong Nepali connections. He writes:
Nepal
has thousands of speech and hearing impaired children. There are a
few satellite schools for the deaf throughout the country, but none
are as well equipped as the school for speech and hearing-impaired
children in Naxal, Kathmandu. This school has 300 students from all
over the country. It is the only such school which provides education
up to 10th grade, and it runs a residential programme for children
who mostly live in privately run hostels. Most of the children are
from rural villages, and most drop out as they are unable to afford
the cost of education and urban lodging.’ Dr Singh says, ‘We
will try to ensure that they complete at least the elementary level
education up to class 10th (the highest level of education possible
for hearing impaired children in Nepal) [and] that they receive adequate
health training as a part of the curriculum with the intention that
they adapt and share this with their communities when they go back
home.
The objective at present is to aim at increasing the literacy
level and health awareness among speech and hearing impaired children
in Nepal. The results of this project can be used as a pilot for other
projects. Subsequently we plan to survey the rural and mountainous
regions of the country to establish the causes and prevalence of deafness.
We will involve the children graduating from the program and their
community of other hearing impaired children in this phase of the
project.
The project started with one student (see below) in April 2006.
It will be effective because there is a desire amongst the people
to learn and know how to read and write. I will do annual evaluations
to ensure that the project is running smoothly.
BODHI will provide US$600 a year to this train-the-trainer project
for Years 1 & 2 in memory of Dr Ken McConnell and Simon Brown.
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2006: 12-year-old Sangeetha
Basnet is from a family
in the village of Dolkha, Charikot, a hilly town about 90 miles east of Kathmandu
towards Mount Everest. She became deaf at the age
of 5 years, secondary to untreated typhoid infection. She is
otherwise in good health. She is the youngest of 10 siblings
with seven sisters and 2 brothers. Sangeetha stays in
Kathmandu with her father, who works as a peon. She started
school late, at the age of 9 years due to extreme poverty and
is currently in class 3 at the School for the Deaf in Kathmandu.
In her class of 25, Sangeeta is among the top 5-10 students.
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Children at the School for the Deaf, Naxal,
Kathmandu, Nepal
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December 2007.Above: Sangeetha Basnet with mother Usha Basnet (left) and teacher Ms Kiran Singh; below: Sangeetha and Dr Sonal Singh
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