- As Deaf Association launches campaign awareness for the deaf
Community development officer for gender and children, Ministry of Health, Aneth Gerana recount her experience in running 21.1km race with the Shuledirect team in Tanzania during the 2016 Kilimarathon16 to raise Tshs 21millions, which when converted to Naira is #3,346,225.92 (according to current exchange rate), to support alternative learning through contents Lab for secondary School students with hearing disabilities in Tanzania, INN reports.
INN obtained the information from the post she shared on Facebook on 3rd march, 2018 which was equally tagged to Inclusive New Network founder, Ekundayo Sejoro. The content was written in Swahili but translated through Facebook translations. She wrote, “A moment with consolation, it was great to work with you madam. I remember this was 2016 I joined the Shuledirect Tanzania team in the efforts to improve deaf education in Tanzania, I was ready to travel to Moshi Kilimanjaro and ran 21.1km to help collection of money to buy a special computer for deaf students.”
“Comfort is an example to all stakeholders of education in Tanzania, let’s participate in improving the education of the deaf Tanzania” she concluded
Meanwhile, the Tanzania Association for the Deaf (Chavita) has launched an awareness campaign for educating government officials on basic human rights of people with hearing impairment.
The campaign, which will be held in Mwanza, Arusha and Morogoro regions, aims at ensuring the people with hearing impairment are involved in formulating government policies and helping them to monitor and implement government development activities.
INN learnt that the Ward executive officers, local leaders and civil servants from district councils will participate in the awareness campaign.
It will help the people with hearing impairment enjoy their basic human rights.
This was said last week by Chavita gender officer Lupi Maswanya during the launch of a two-year education campaign funded by the Civil Foundation Society at Sh160 million. More than 600,000 people in the country have hearing impairment, according to the National Policy on Disability (NDP), 2004.
Chavita country public relations officer Msafiri Mhando said the campaign would also help the people with hearing impairment to understand that they were citizens of this country and were protected by the law as any other citizen in society. “Their abilities are overlooked, their capacities are underestimated and their needs are not given priority,” Mr Mhando noted.
Mr Mhando said time had come for the government and nongovernmental organisations, including media houses to use interpreters for the deaf to ensure they were included in development activities.