The Global Foundation For Children With Hearing Loss Vietnam Blog

The Power of Team

2012-02-09T21:43:00.009+07:00

The Global Foundation For Children With Hearing Loss has always been a team effort. We emphasize creating an empowering, open environment where our board of directors, volunteer professionals, global partners, and supporters can contribute their talents to our mission in ways that they are most excited about. It has led to some real creative genius and our results in two short years are proof that our model is working.

A strong in-country partner is key to the success of any international project. The relationship that the Global Foundation has with Thuan An Center, and director Thuy specifically, is what has made this ship sail. There are so many moving parts and nuances to conducting the extensive programs that we do, particularly from half a world away. Thuy's leadership, work ethic, and passion to help children who are deaf or hard of hearing in her country is unparalleled and I have been incredibly grateful to have her not only as our partner in this movement, but also as a dear friend. I caught up with her yesterday to lay out the details for the coming month. I saw her last in November 2011, but it was as if no time had passed at all. We caught up on each other's news over a bowl of grapes and mangosteins before settling right back into the business of planning our program.

There is no question that a big part of our success has been the ability of our volunteer professionals to work together to produce consistently high quality work for our Vietnam Deaf Education Program. Our summer Teacher Training and Mobile Mission teams are comprised of seasoned professionals with decades of expertise collectively in audiology, speech pathology, and auditory-verbal deaf education and therapy from hospitals, early intervention centers, private practice, and universities spread across the United States, Canada, and Hong Kong. They bring different experiences, professional backgrounds, and perspectives about pediatric hearing loss to the team, and like a beautiful mosaic, it just works. It has been incredibly rewarding as their leader these past few years to watch them collaborate in structuring and building this amazing curriculum and then have fun together in Vietnam carrying it out.

Today provided an indication of the growing reputation that our work and our team are garnering in Vietnam. I had a meeting with Children's Hospital 1 to prepare for our Mobile Mission training there later this month. With a sheepish smile, the director shared with me the list of Vietnamese participants. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the list had more than doubled in size.

When we first started planning, we were focused on doctors, technicians, and therapists from this one hospital and a hearing aid dispenser. Word had spread about the program we are providing here. Now the list includes, among others, directors of early intervention centers, the dean and members of a collegiate special education department, teachers and principals from mainstream schools that have children with hearing loss enrolled, and therapists and doctors from three ENT hospitals spread across Vietnam. This group collectively represents the entire country – north, south, and central. Not bad for a two-year old program. It speaks volumes about the Vietnamese desire to learn and the exceptional work of our professionals who have helped to make this program what it is.

This response will certainly bode well for us as we continue conversations to expand our model nationally. I’m honored to have the Vietnamese trust in the Global Foundation For Children With Hearing Loss and could not be prouder of our team. One of my favorite quotes is from Margaret Mead, “never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

Word.

An Inspiring Start to the Month Ahead

2012-02-08T08:16:00.008+07:00

The bright sun and familiar sights and sounds enveloped me like a warm hug as I made my way out of the airport in Ho Chi Minh City. It is a long flight from the US, but I never fail to get a second wind upon arriving here. The energy of this city is palpable and contagious and it is always exciting to get started on the Global Foundation For Children With Hearing Loss’ latest adventure.

A friend met me with bright flowers and was welcomed company in the taxi ride to the apartment where I'll be making my base until the rest of the team arrives later in the month. This is a great neighborhood enclave off a major street with its own set of inviting shops and cafes to explore. The Tet (New Year) decorations are still up and it is nice to know that there are people on this side of the world who share my procrastination at taking down holiday cheer.

Last night, I was invited to join an informal networking event of expat speech pathologists, school counselors, psychologists, and rehabilitation professionals working in Vietnam. It was fun to arrive at the restaurant and see familiar faces, including some professionals who attended our Saturday lecture event during last January's Mobile Mission and a doctor from Children's Hospital 1 where we will be working later this month.

The stories shared over the course of the evening were wonderful to hear. This group has been working around the world for years – most as part of the international school network. Besides tales of different schools and perspectives on the global community, there were stories of compassion such as helping to install the first bathroom in a village in the Philippines and lending a hand to a child’s education costs so he could eventually graduate and go to college in the US where he is now studying social work with plans to return to his country to help others. They all had such passion for what they do and for giving back to humanity. The evening certainly offered a lot of inspiration that each of us can help each other in small ways to make the world a better place. I was grateful to have been a part of the conversation.

I'm looking forward to getting things rolling later today with a ride out to Lai Thieu to work with Thuy, my good friend and co-partner on this Vietnam program. Let's get this show started!

Round Two Begins!

2012-01-30T06:26:00.016+07:00

We're on our way to Vietnam for the Global Foundation's second Mobile Mission. Thanks for checking in. We hope that you'll ride along with us over the next several weeks as we travel from Saigon to Lai Thieu to Nha Trang on this latest adventure.

For a bit of history on our Mobile Mission series.....the participants in our Vietnam Deaf Education Program asked us last year if we could supplement our annual summer workshops at Thuan An Center with visits to their home communities during the year to further their professional development. So, we designed this Mobile Mission series which features in-classroom mentorship and audiology training on location at some of the 38 schools and centers in our program.

Last January's Mobile Mission team traveled to Dalat, Danang, and Saigon. Each location we visited had their own unique strengths and opportunities in their efforts to serve children with hearing loss. Our seasoned professionals did a wonderful job adjusting on the fly to provide classroom coaching to teachers and audiology training to school staff and local hearing aid dispensers. We fit hearing aids on children who needed them. Families came in droves in the evenings to hear our professionals lecture about the role they could play in supporting their children's auditory and language development.

For us at the Global Foundation, the Mobile Missions provide invaluable opportunity to see first-hand our training participants at work in their home environments. We adjust and make enhancements to our summer program based on these experiences. For instance, in January, we recognized a need for more pediatric audiology expertise. So, we added an in-depth audiology track to our 2011 summer program to provide extra training for educational staff so they can better support the audiological needs of the children in their schools.

Our summer program and Mobile Mission series are integrated learning experiences for the participants whom we are working with in this multi-year initiative...lessons learned during the summer at Thuan An Center are reinforced during the Mobile Missions in home classrooms and therapy centers. And by fitting hearing aids on the children attending the schools in our program, we can provide training throughout the year to ensure these children have every opportunity for success.

This February 2012 Mobile Mission team comprises of Judy Simser, Jim Watson, and Lea Watson as our auditory-verbal professionals and Lauri Nelson, Jacque Patton, and Zofia Wald-Mroz as our audiologists. It is a terrific group who bring great teamwork and sense of humor to go along with their years of experience.

We'll be starting at the Children's Hospital in Saigon, training doctors, therapists, and technicians. Then we head out to the countryside of Lai Thieu and the beaches of Nha Trang to work with a group of school programs. In addition to the auditory-verbal and pediatric audiology training, we'll be working alongside the Vietnamese participants to test hearing and fit hearing aids as necessary on over 100 young children. We are in for a very fun, rewarding time for sure.

We're heading out to the airport. Please bear with us as we make our way across this big planet. I will kick things off in the coming days with stories from Hanoi, Nha Trang, and Saigon as I work with our partners there to put the final pieces in place in advance of our Mobile Mission and continue to explore expansion and business development opportunities for the Global Foundation. The rest of the team arrives later in February and we'll get this show started.

I invite you to take a look at our blog posts from the past few years relegating the journey we've taken from 2009 to get to this point. For a summary of our efforts in Vietnam, check out Invent for Humanity's coverage of our work.

Thank you again for your support. There is much, much more to come. We look forward to sharing it all with you!

Curtain Call!

2011-07-23T19:42:00.022+07:00

As our summer program draws to a close, it is quite remarkable to reflect on all that was accomplished. In the course of four weeks, we trained 87 teachers who represented 38 schools and early intervention centers throughout South Vietnam, provided training and consultative support to 55 families, fit 30 hearing aids on young children, trained 18 participants in our new audiology program, hosted four webinars between families in the US and Vietnam.

We presented to approximately 80 people at the US Consulate in HCMC about pediatric hearing loss and visited two pediatric hospital audiology clinics.

We translated over 600 pages of material and produced four handbooks for our program participants. Eight interpreters worked tirelessly to ensure the content was understood across culture and language differences. We collected data on each child and family that we met with so we can follow their progress over time. It was quite a month for sure!
Every good program has an incredible team behind it and this one is no exception. I cannot say enough about the efforts of our Thuan An Center partners and our professionals and students who traveled from the US and Hong Kong to share their time, expertise, and knowledge with the Vietnamese participants. They say that “you make a living by what you get, and you make a life by what you give.” To that, I would add, “…and by giving, you can change another person’s life”. Our team did exactly that and I am grateful to each of them.

Here are a few shining moments that point to the impact the Global Foundation For Children With Hearing Loss is making as an organization in Vietnam:

1) We've seen a convergence of our various programs – summer teacher training, mobile missions to sites during the year, and hearing aid distribution. Children who received hearing aids from us during the January 2011 mobile mission traveled to us this summer for audiology appointments with our team, their parents met with our therapists about language development, and their teachers were engaged in our training program. So we provided the children access to sound and are training others about how to help these children make the best use of this sound.

2) Participants new to our program this summer were further along in their understanding of the topics we covered than last year's group. The reason is because last year's participants went back to their home schools and shared their knowledge with their peers. The crux of what we are trying to accomplish -- empower teachers to train each other -- is taking root.

3) Our new audiology program involved 18 participants who do audiology work at the schools, a hearing aid dispenser, and medical teams from two hospitals. We integrated our family consults with the audiology training so that the audiology participants not only learned theory and practiced using the equipment, but had the opportunity to practice what they learned on the families themselves with the support of our professional audiologists. This really helped further their training and confidence.

4) We fit 30 hearing aids on children from low-income families. All of these children attend schools in our program so we will be able to monitor their progress and work with their teachers and families to ensure their continued success.

5) We visited 2 hospitals that provide pediatric audiology and therapy support. We will provide training and newborn hearing screening information to them as part of our mobile mission in 2012.

Those are just a few of the highlights that demonstrate the scope and impact of our efforts.

We hope you'll take a few minutes and enjoy this video that captures the experience: http://animoto.com/play/iJjAZcR19Z2qzbX01QRKLA

Thank you for your interest and support of the Global Foundation. We will be returning to Vietnam in February 2012 for our next Mobile Mission. I hope you'll join us on our blog for that. If you would like to stay in touch with us in the meantime, please sign up for our quarterly newsletter at our website at http://www.childrenwithhearingloss.org/contact.shtml. Also, we’ll be presenting at the ASHA Convention in November so if you are there, please stop by!

Thank you again- we are grateful for your support. Until our next adventure….cam on and tam biet!

Finishing Strong and Looking Ahead

2011-07-21T23:46:00.002+07:00

It was fitting that on the day we wrapped up our program, the construction crews put the first coat of fresh, daffodil-yellow paint on the new early intervention building at Thuan An Center.

Today was all about inspiration and progress, and the new early intervention center, which opens in a few weeks, plays a part in that hopeful future. The Japanese embassy granted Thuan An Center, our Vietnam partner, funding support several months ago to construct the early intervention building. The staff hopes this facility will become a “center of excellence” for audiology, early intervention therapy, and auditory-verbal education for young children with hearing loss in South Vietnam. Some of the teachers who have been engaged in our Deaf Education Program the past year will work at this new center.

The last day of our program began with a teacher training lecture about assessment. Ann Baumann discussed why and how we establish benchmarks and goals to ensure children with hearing loss progress in their auditory and language development. She explained that a child’s listening age dates to when he or she first had quality access to sound. A child with a hearing loss may be 3 or 4 years old, but have a listening age of just 1 or 2 years. It takes time for that child to make up for lost ground in their auditory and language development. With therapy support, the child should make 12 months’ progress in their first year of listening and then more than that in subsequent years. This way, the child will “catch up” developmentally to their hearing peers over time. Ann demonstrated to the class how to collect data and communication samples to help evaluate a child’s present language and auditory skill level and then use that information to lay plans for that child's progress.

At lunch, Viet, one of our volunteer interpreters gave a farewell speech that touched all of us. Viet is a Vietnamese American who served as captain in the South Vietnamese air force many years ago. He came to the United States at the end of the Vietnam War and started a new life for himself and his family. Now retired, he volunteers his time as an interpreter in a hospital in Salt Lake City. I met Viet through one of our graduate student volunteers who had been serving an internship at the hospital. Viet offered to lend his interpreter skills to our program. I was taken by his good heart and incredible personal story and welcomed him to join us. This was his fourth visit to Vietnam since he left almost 40 years ago and I think he enjoyed the opportunity to spend time with family and old friends on the weekends while serving our program during the week.

During his speech, Viet reflected on the supportive environment that he had witnessed during our program this summer, the kindness that he was grateful to receive from the Vietnamese participants, and expressed that for the first time he felt like he had truly come home. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

The afternoon brought review sessions for both the teacher training program and the audiology program. The participants are all determined to do well on tomorrow’s final test…some even asking oh-so-politely whether we might consider lowering the bar of what constitutes a passing score. They need to pass the final in order to advance next year and they have been studying very hard to do so. I have been touched by how committed the participants are to our program and acquiring new knowledge that will help them in their work.

The day wrapped up with all the participants and professionals exchanging gifts, songs, and lots and lots of photos. In what may be the best kind of endorsement, we were honored to receive cash donations in support of our program from two of our Vietnamese participants. The owner of a hearing aid dispenser and a medical team from one of the HCMC hospitals made contributions. It was totally unexpected and a kind gesture on both of their parts.

After dinner, I settled in with the interpreters for a post mortem about this summer’s program and to brainstorm for next year. For two hours we bantered and had a great time joking with each other while also devising some creative plans. They were all rightfully very tired but totally engaged and inspired to share their thoughts and feedback. That is one of the things I love about working with our Vietnamese partners…they are such a great group and completely committed to the success of this program. Back at the hotel, the team and I sat out on the patio for one last late-evening gathering over french fries and beverages. We were all a bit wistful that it was over but also very satisfied.

I’m looking forward to reading the evaluation forms from the Vietnamese participants and seeing how they do on the final tests tomorrow. Bigger picture, it has been powerful this summer to see evidence that our efforts here to train teachers and professionals and empower families to help children with hearing loss are taking root so quickly and substantially.

Hearing Aid Fitting Day!

2011-07-15T23:46:00.001+07:00

We arrived at the center at 7:30 this morning to a large group of families waiting for us. Little girls in brightly colored dresses and boys in neatly pressed pants played with each other in the school yard while their moms and dads sat with tired eyes on benches under the eaves. Many had arrived hours earlier, some after traveling all night, to be here today to receive new hearing aids for their children. We had a schedule of appointments and previously assured these families that they would be given hearing aids, but they came early anyway.

By the end of the memorable day, we fit 15 children with hearing aids. For some, it was their first pair, including a cute 18 month old boy with a moderate to severe hearing loss. His face lit up when we turned on the aids and he responded immediately to sounds. Others had hearing aids in the past that were damaged or needed replacing. Many had hearing aids on loan from their schools and the families wished to have their own pair. All of these children were from low-income families that didn't have the means to secure hearing aids.

Our audiology program participants were paired up with each family and went through the entire cycle with them --hearing testing, hearing aid fitting, and consultation -- with the oversight of our professionals. It was a wonderful opportunity for them to practice what they had learned in our program in a real-world setting with families. By the end, our students were doing much of the work themselves, their confidence had greatly increased.

We take careful records of each child that receives a hearing aid from the Global Foundation. All of the families we saw today come from schools in our Deaf Education Program with teachers and therapists enrolled in our training programs. So, we will be able to monitor their progress over time.

While the hearing aid fitting was taking place, the teachers in our teacher training program were engaged in lecture and an interactive breakout session about behavior management. We also had a special breakout session where a camera was set up in a few of our family consultation sessions. With the families' permission, the teachers observed Hillary Ganek as she conducted the family therapy sessions from another room. It was an opportunity for the teachers to see how therapy sessions might occur and talk as a group as to what they saw and learned.

Last night, one of the participants in our audiology program treated our team and the audiology participants to a special dinner at a local restaurant. The food was wonderful and the company a lot of fun. It wasn't long before the Vietnamese and Americans started up a competition to see how many children's songs we knew...for the next hour or so we sang back and forth until finally the Americans started to run out of ideas. The Vietnamese kept going strong....completely outdoing us in the song department. We finally waved white napkins in surrender, humbled but loving every second of the experience too!

The Teachers' Point of View

2011-07-14T14:36:00.005+07:00

Many of the families taking part in the audiology and therapy consults that I blogged about in my last post live 400-800 km away. They are making the long trip to our program here by motorbike or public transportation -- often overnight – to spend time with our professionals. It’s really remarkable and a testament to the fortitude of parents to do their best by their children.

While the families are meeting with our audiologists and therapists, their children’s teachers are close by engaged in our teacher training program. It’s a two-pronged effort to help these children from 35 schools and early intervention centers spread across South Vietnam maximize the use of their hearing aids and progress with their spoken language development.

We’re in the middle of the second week of our teacher training program for Level 1 teachers. The 45 first-year participants have been immersed this week in lecture and interactive practicum on topics related to teaming with families, language milestones, literacy and reading, and auditory development strategies.

The Level 1 teachers have also signed up for individual consults with our deaf education and therapy professionals. These sessions offer teachers the opportunity to get advice about lesson plans and curriculum development and new ideas for addressing the needs of specific children they work with. They are also asking questions about our daily lectures here and how to apply the lessons learned to their own classrooms, indicating they are absorbing the information and thinking through the material they are being taught. I enjoy sitting in on these one-hour sessions for the insight they provide into the varied and unique situations and school environments that the teachers face.

In a feel-good moment, one of the teachers shared that her school started an early intervention program this year. Some of her peers who teach kindergarten attended our course last summer. They learned about the value of early intervention and proposed that the school start a program for younger children with hearing loss at their school. Previously, the school had children wait until they were kindergarten-age before they would start to work with them. Now, they are launching an early intervention program and this teacher is one of the first to work in this new program.

Another teacher shared her concerns about consistent access to hearing aids for her students. Her families receive off-brand or used hearing aids donated through international organizations and charities. When the hearing aid breaks, there often isn’t a place to get it repaired or a means for getting a new one. As a result, the child no longer has access to sound.

She said, “It is very hard to deny a child after they have been provided a hearing aid and are learning to listen and talk. When we cannot find a replacement or the family cannot afford one, the child loses all their progress. That is so much harder than not providing a hearing aid to the child in the first place.”

The Global Foundation is working with a few other Vietnam charities on a plan to establish a micro-credit process whereby hearing aids would be provided to low-income families. The families would pay for the hearing aid over time, allowing us to source more hearing aids and sustain the program.

The Kids Are Alright

2011-07-13T08:38:00.013+07:00

“Yeah!” The three-year-old girl cheered loudly each time she heard the pure tone through the audiology headphones. She would then enthusiastically drop the audiometry toy into the bucket with an extra punch. Moments like these put me in a good mood very fast.

We started our audiology clinics and family consults this past Monday. These two aspects of our program work in tandem. Forty-eight families of children with hearing loss representing a wide swath of schools in our Deaf Education program are scheduled one audiology and one therapy appointment over the next two weeks. A few of these children received their hearing aids from the Global Foundation during our January Mobile Mission. It has been inspiring to see the children’s progress and know that we are training their teachers and families about how to help them utilize their hearing aids and sustain their auditory and spoken language progression.

Each family starts with our audiology team. With our professionals’ careful oversight, the students in our audiology training program are practicing what they learned in the first two weeks. Each child gets an audiogram and their hearing aids checked. Our professionals and audiology students review case history and discuss audiological management with the parents. In some cases, the child’s teacher is joining in the conversation as well. New hearing aid fittings for some children will take place later this week.

After the audiology consult, the family goes on to meet with one of our deaf education professionals, auditory-verbal therapists, or speech language pathologists. During these sessions, the focus is on providing families with techniques and strategies they can use to help their children make the best use of their hearing devices. The parents are coming with their children, often as couples, wholly engaged and anxious to learn. In hour-long therapy appointments, our professionals demonstrate and practice play techniques with the families.

The convergence of our teacher and audiology training efforts, hearing aid distribution, and family consultations across the 35 schools involved in our summer and mobile mission programs has really come to life this week.

In an earlier blog post, I shared that one of the Level 2 teachers brought a video of her therapy session with a boy who received his first pair of hearing aids during our January Mobile Mission. He has a moderate hearing loss and attends a school in a rural part of Vietnam. His teacher has been in our training program for the past two years.I reflected on how great it was that the boy had hearing aids and a therapist in our Level 2 program who was now engaged in a video analyis about how to help him with his spoken language progression.

Well, the boy, his mother, and teacher came for his audiology and therapy appointment yesterday. We answered their collective questions and collaborated to make a few adjustments to his hearing aids to help increase his auditory potential. Thanks to his teacher and family’s efforts, the boy has made good progress with his listening and spoken language skills since January.

In another example, a mother of a 4-year-old entered our teacher training program last year. Her son had just received his first pair of hearing aids. Over the course of this past year, the mother practiced the auditory-verbal strategies and techniques she had learned during our summer program and our January mobile mission with her son. She came to our Level 2 training course this summer and attended the parent program. Her son now has a more extensive vocabulary and is able to identify sounds without looking at the person making the sounds. The next step is to help him articulate those sounds without visual reinforcement. During the therapy consult, one of our therapists, Helen Zuganelis, showed her some strategies to help him achieve that.

The success stories are heartwarming, but there are somber tales too that drive us. A little girl in one of our family therapy sessions was identified with hearing loss at age 1. The family is extremely poor and bought the cheapest hearing aid they could afford for her. Unfortunately, the body aid broke after just a week and the child has been without a hearing device for 2 years. She has no language at all - no spoken language or sign language. Hospital test results indicate this child is a candidate for a cochear implant. The price? $20,000. Vietnam health care does not cover the cost of hearing aids or cochlear implants. The family qualifies for some financial support, bringing that price down to about $11,000. As my audiology friend in Seattle would say, "that's jumbo shrimp" -- meaning, when you're poor, $11,000 is still very much out of range.

One of the things that we are finding in our audiology consults is that children’s hearing aids are not matching their audiograms. The hearing aids are often not powerful enough or are set about 20db too low for the child to understand the speech sounds. Our audiologists have been adjusting the hearing aids as they can. They are also showing the audiology program participants how to use hearing aid test box results to ensure that the hearing aids are adjusted to fit the audiogram of each child to maximize their hearing potential. This concept is a new one for them. So more training needs to be done... meanwhile, we'll savor the bright moments as they come.

The Ripple Effect Carries On

2011-07-10T21:27:00.007+07:00

Last year, I wrote an article for the ASHA Leader titled "The Ripple Effect of a Powerful Idea" in which I explained the goal of our Vietnam program is to empower teachers, professionals, and families with knowledge that they can then share with each other. Our collective efforts will ensure that more children with hearing loss can succeed. We cannot change the hand that fate has dealt, but what we can do is help each other make the most of what we've got.

In the ASHA article, I talked about how parents who had taken part in our parent program last summer found inspiration in the idea that they could take an active role in their children's development. They banded together to start a parent group to network with each other to provide support and share insights. Last Friday, another example of this ripple effect idea came into play....

On my way to the lecture room, I passed Hein, one of our interpreters who has been working with us for the past two summers. Hein has her own early intervention center in Nha Trang. She had asked Thuy if she could be the interpreter for our audiology program this year because she wanted to increase her knowledge about the discipline.

We stopped for a quick chat and I asked Hein how the audiology program was going. She broke into a big smile and said it was a terrific curriculum and that she and the others were learning a great deal. Hein went on to explain that the hospital in Nha Trang doesn't have an audiology clinic. Her families and others in the area that have children with hearing loss have to make a 8-10-hour trip to Ho Chi Minh City when their child needs audiology services, even for minor issues.

Several staff members of a hearing aid dispenser are enrolled in our audiology training. Hein shared the problem with them and now they are making arrangments for some of the staff members in our training workshop to offer audiology services at the Nha Trang hospital on a periodic basis. It was heartwarming news to receive at the end of a very rewarding week.

Today marks the halfway point of our month-long training program....we accomplished much in the first two weeks but there is much more to do. We are looking forward to the days ahead!

Consulate Presentation and Hospital Visits -- A Memorable Day Among Many!

2011-07-07T23:38:00.004+07:00

We were invited to share our work at the US Consulate General of Vietnam today. I first met Kit, the Consulate PIO, when our program here in Vietnam was just getting started. We became fast friends, meeting several times during my trips here to talk about our work and share travel stories over many cups of coffee in the wonderful open-air plaza located outside their offices . When the Consulate approved our grant request -- a real honor -- Kit suggested that we fit into our schedule this summer the wonderful opportunity to present to consulate officials and the Vietnamese community.

About 80 people and our team gathered in the airy conference room on the 8th floor with picturesque windows of the old landmark French cathedral outside. Five of our team members who have been involved with our program from the start -- Martha Harney, Judy Odendahl, Hillary Ganek, Helen Zuganelis, and Kim Hamren --- each gave brief overviews of their respective professions, collectively building the story of how children with hearing loss can learn to listen and talk. I followed that with a perspective into the current landscape of pediatric hearing loss in Vietnam and explained how our program is helping to fill gaps in support and services for these children. It was a real treat to be able to share all our hard work from the past few years with such an esteemed audience.

Earlier in the day, our team's audiologists and I toured the two hospitals in HCMC that offer pediatric audiology. It was gracious of the department heads to share their programs with us, and we had a productive afternoon sharing insights and ideas. Both hospitals are doing good things in spite of limited resources and capacity and I was inspired by their dedication and commitment to their work.

They recognize the value of newborn hearing screening but the limited number of trained professionals and equipment has made it difficult to expand the offering of audiology services to children. Their presentations gave us some valuable perspective about the services they provide, including hearing health care, audiology, hearing aid fitting, cochlear implant surgery, mapping, therapy support, and rehabilitation. Some of the staff from both hospitals are taking part in our workshop this summer at Thuan An Center and they expressed a real interest to have us expand our training offerings to include their clinics. This is something we'll pursue as part of our mobile mission efforts.

Connections and Conversations

2011-07-05T22:34:00.000+07:00

The Level 1 participants started arriving early this morning, some by motorbikes three to a seat packed to the gills with personal effects. Others came by bus and made the last stretch of the journey on foot laden down with suitcases and bags. This group of teachers is new to our program, traveling from schools across the south to join us for 2.5 weeks of immersion in fundamentals of audiology, speech pathology, early intervention, and auditory verbal education.

Our Level 1 participants work at the same schools as those in Level 2. So it was quite an endorsement to have this new group learn about our program from their peers and be so enthusiastic to take part this summer. I joined Thuy and Dao to welcome them on a beautiful sunny day that just added to the optimism radiating from the group. It was like the first day of summer camp. The participants sat around the wooden desks bright eyed and rapt with attention, excited to start the learning process ahead.

On Sunday, I joined a longtime friend of mine from a HCMC-based nonprofit organization. Chinh is one of those selfless human beings who inspire you to be a better person simply through the way she leads her life. We met at a local restaurant located in a shady, pleasant courtyard that had a bit of classical music piping in as a pleasant backdrop. Chinh’s passion is to devise and lead projects that serve the needs of children across a breadth of disabilities, and she’s implemented solutions that have improved the learning environments and living conditions of these children in South Vietnam. I always enjoy hearing about Chinh’s latest projects and brainstorming with her about possibilities for our own program. She understands well the intricacies of Vietnamese governance and has the respect of many people here that has enabled her to get things done.

One of the projects she is currently involved with is a hearing aid distribution program. We had a preliminary meeting several months ago with other local NGOs to discuss how such a program might be designed and made sustainable. The model that she is proposing includes micro-credit elements whereby low-income families would be provided a hearing aid for their child with the requirement they would pay for it over time in small increments. Eventually, the cost of the hearing aid would be covered, the family would own the hearing aid outright, and the funds generated would help support the program.

Chinh shared that she had been contacted by the US Consulate about my team’s presentation there this Thursday. The Consulate asked if she would serve as our interpreter – she agreed – and we had a good laugh over the coincidence and the fact that we already know each other well. She also commented that her temporary roommate is an assistant professor at Ho Chi Minh City University of Education and is in the deaf education field. We connected the dots and figured out that Anh was one of our interpreters from last summer’s program. Anh is incredibly bright and forward-thinking, as is Chinh. It was cool to think these two new friends are living together. Anh is about to depart for Australia to begin her master’s degree studies in auditory-verbal deaf education. It was fun to see that it really is a small world of six degrees of separation.

Fourth of July Vietnam Style

2011-07-04T22:20:00.000+07:00

The cooks at Thuan An Center helped us celebrate our nation’s birthday with a lunch of French fries, watermelon, and “steak”. They have their own special way of making French fries. Potato-like fruit are plucked from the trees hanging out front of the center, sliced up, and then fried in some batter over an open fire. You’d never guess they were made from fruit and they are really tasty. The team polished off our lunchtime supply in no time.

Earlier in the day, the Vietnamese asked Kathryn and Janet to sing the national anthem at the start of their practicum breakout. They obliged much…a cappella to boot… much to the delight of the Vietnamese who always love a song.

The Global Foundation has an application and screening process for graduate students interested to join our training efforts. We have a contingent of graduate students here from Utah State, North Texas, Michigan, and Hong Kong universities. They are a terrific group of aspiring audiologists, deaf educators, and speech pathologists that have lent their own youthful energy and enthusiasm to the program. The Utah State students procured supplies from manufacturers in advance of coming to Vietnam. They packaged listening kits for the participants that include ear mold blowers, stethoscopes, battery testers, dry aid kids, and other items necessary to the maintenance of ear molds and hearing aids. During tonight’s Parent Program, these listening kits were distributed to the families who received them with much gratitude and appreciation.

The Fourth of July wrapped up with some of our team members joining a group of Vietnamese parents at the local Karaoke joint for some bars of Michael Jackson’s Thriller and other American songs.

A Big Hug For the Ages and a Look Ahead

2011-07-01T21:25:00.003+07:00

"You need to hug him too!" Brad McPherson's time with us ended today along with Maura Berndsen. The Vietnamese had a little ceremony to acknowledge their efforts and to also welcome Ann Baumann and Kim Hamren who had just arrived a few hours earlier. Maura got a big hug along with her presents and when it came to recognize Brad, the teachers giggled that Brad should get a hug too. It is not in the Vietnamese culture for women to hug men that aren't family. So, when one of teachers did the deed, everyone in the room had a big belly laugh over that.

Maura wrapped up a successful first week of our program with a lecture and practicum about lesson planning and ongoing assessment. She used the analogy of a map to explain how lesson plans can help therapists, families, and teachers devise strategies to move towards target goals for the children they work with. If you know where you want to go, the map can help you get there. Maura also explained there are core areas of language and cognitive development that need to be monitored. With careful assessment and planning, the team (parents, teachers, therapists, etc) can identify and address the child's weakness areas and help that child progress in their listening and spoken language acumen over time.

Meanwhile, the Audiology program participants learned about VRA and play audiometry -two methods for testing hearing of young children. They had a great time during the interactive afternoon, testing each other's hearing, learning how to use otoscopes, and practicing VRA with fun plastic globes the team sourced from Walmart before coming here. Who knew that Walmart would be the place for perfect audiometry toys?

Next week is a smorgsborg of activity...we have been invited to present our work at the US Consulate on Thursday. The audiology team will visit two hospitals in HCMC to see their work in pediatric audiology and we'll discuss future opportunties for training in the hospitals.

The Level 2 group of 55 teachers conclude their training on Wednesday and we start up with the Level 1 group. Level 1 features about 40 teachers of the deaf and therapists. They are either new to our program or didn't pass last year's final test and are back to repeat the course. Over the 2.5 weeks program, they will learn fundamentals in audiology, speech pathology, early intervention, and auditory verbal education.

We have our second webinar on Wednesday and at least nine American and Vietnamese families will participate. The Audiology course and Parent Program will continue their curriculi in the week ahead. It promises to be a memorable week, for sure.

This Big World Felt a Bit Smaller Today

2011-06-30T21:16:00.011+07:00

The three Vietnamese mothers filed into Thuy's office, settling in elbow to elbow onto folding chairs set around the square table. They curiously eyed the funky looking webcam mounted onto Hillary's computer, and listened quietly with cautious enthusiasm as Christy, our Vietnamese American interpreter, explained to them how the webinar that we were about to engage in would unfold.

We hosted one webinar during last summer's program and it was a big hit with the Vietnamese families. They appreciated the opportunity to hear perspectives from American families about their own children who were deaf or hard of hearing. The insights and advice shared was just more proof that the love and concern that parents have for their children is universal. This webinar idea was entirely Hillary Ganek's, one of our professionals who is an auditory-verbal therapist out of Johns Hopkins. This year, Hillary and I decided to expand the concept to four webinars across the month so that more families could participate.

"What do you do about ear infections?" "How many days does your child have therapy?" "How often do you change a hearing aid battery" "What kind of hearing aids does your son have?" "How long did it take for him to begin to talk?" The questions came from the Vietnamese mothers...and it was a wonderful surprise when the American mother who joined us from Chicago indicated she was fluent in both English and Vietnamese. As she answered the questions in her native language, it made for an engaging, fluid conversation with the Vietnamese mothers on our end. They visably relaxed and began to ask questions in rapid fire.

Over the course of the hour, they shared the challenges that come with having no professional audiologists in Vietnam, the need for more trained therapists to turn to for support, balancing work with time to help their children progress, the cost of FM systems and hearing aids. The list of worries and concerns ran on and on. It was a raw glimpse into the personal lives of the families here. Our next webinar is scheduled for next week and the families who attended today all indicated they will participate in that one as well as to carry on the conversation.

Later this evening, we started the second 3-evening Parent Program series. The contingent of families participating in this series isn't quite as informed about hearing loss and their children's situations as the first group. Lauri and Martha did a great job patiently walking through basic audiology fundamentals such as how to read an audiogram, ensure their children are fitted with appropriate hearing technology, troubleshoot hearing issues, and care for their children's hearing aids.

I introduced Charlie Shafer and Helen Woolard in the last 30 minutes of the evening so they could share their personal perspectives with the Vietnamese parents as successful young adults with hearing loss. I mentioned in an earlier post that Helen is a 20-year-old photography student at University of North Carolina. She has two cochlear implants, one of which she received just a few months ago. Helen has been busy connecting with the participants in our program each day -- and honestly, it doesn't take much effort as people are drawn to her. She's been busy capturing the participants' stories through photos and written narrative.

Charlie is a 15-year-old high school student out of Seattle who wears two hearing aids to overcome a severe hearing loss. Charlie created a heartwarming speech, slideshow, and video about his life thus far in preparation for this experience. He has bonded with the deaf children who board here at Thuan An Center during the summer, playing games, soccer, and even singing songs with them.

Charlie and Helen both raised money and funded the full cost of their trips to be here. They are remarkable people - down to earth, personable, mature beyond their years, and with such genuine care for the children and families here. I'm grateful to know them and have them in our midst this summer.

Empathy. Compassion. People reaching out with professional expertise and personal stories to help other people. It really doesn't get much better than this.

The Whole is Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts

2011-06-29T19:55:00.007+07:00

Today's schedule was a demonstration of how our Deaf Education program draws on several elements to collectively increase the potential for listening and spoken language in children with hearing loss.

Spoken language development is a process that starts with listening. Children with hearing loss newly fit with hearing aids need the support of therapists, families, and teachers to help their brains make sense of sounds they are now hearing. With such support, they can then develop spoken language. In today's Teacher Training program lecture, Kathryn Wilson presented the Auditory Learning Guide, a strategic tool that helps professionals and parents chart a child's listening and spoken language development after they are fit with hearing technology. Use of the ALG helps ensure a child's progress is occuring at a rate consistent with his or her cognitive potential.

During the afternoon breakout sessions, teachers watched auditory-verbal therapy videos and discussed different strategies to help a child wth hearing loss move through each of the developmental stages outlined in the ALG.

Meanwhile, across the way, our brand new Audiology program got started. There are no formally trained audiologists in Vietnam. So, we created this four week program to train staff members who do audiology work so they can best meet the audiological needs of children who are deaf or hard of hearing at their schools. Our program this summer involves about 20 school staff, hearing aid dispensers, and hospital personnel. We kicked things off today with a morning lecture and afternoon breakout sessions in which participants practiced using audiometers to test each other's hearing.

Parents play an important role in the cultivation of their children's language because they are the ones who spend the most time with them. We emphasized that in tonight's Parent Program, focusing the first hour on specific strategies that parents could use in their everyday lives to foster listening and spoken language opportunities. During the second hour, the parents broke into small groups and practiced what they learned during the lecture in play activites with their own children. The parents were like sponges, soaking up all ideas and coaching support from our professionals about strategies and tactics.

The Global Foundation monitors the progress of the children and teachers that we serve. We keep a record of every child that receives a hearing aid from our Hearing Aid Distribution program so we can follow up with them at a later date. A team of academics helped us develop a battery of tests which we will begin executing this summer. The parents enrolled in our Parent Program turned in a survey tonight that provides insight to their children's language and auditory skills at this point in time. We also asked for information about the hearing aids their children are wearing. We're testng the teachers to measure their progress in understanding of the material and ability to incorporate strategies into their curriculi. All of these different test pieces will help us ensure that we are successful in achieving the collective goals of our program.

All About Audiology

2011-06-28T23:00:00.000+07:00

This morning, Lauri Nelson presented on audiology fundamentals including aspects such as hearing test protcols, audiograms, hearing aids, how the brain interprets sounds, and listening environments. The questions that the participants had demonstrated a solid basic understanding of audiology -- they wanted to know more about things like gain and output, interpreting audiograms to fit hearing aids well, and why fitting a child with hearing aids doesn't immediately transfer to spoken language.

This afternoon, the participants split into three groups for practicum rotation. One session was tied to the morning lecture focused on understanding and interpreting audiograms. Another breakout, called Teacher Integration of Skills is a series about how to implement the aspects from the morning lecture into the teachers' home schools. In this particular session, Maura Berndsen and Janet Fuller-- with the help of Charlie Shafer -- demonstrated how to check that children's hearing aids are working properly and how to use Ling sounds to test hearing. The final breakout series is called Coaching Parents. In today's session, the focus was on the grieving process that parents go through when they learn that their child has a hearing loss.

We also have video consultations. This is the first time we've tried this...and its going to be a big hit. Nine teachers sent us video of themselves in therapy and classroom sessions in advance. They also completed some self-evaluation forms to explain what they are doing in the video. Judy Odendahl and Kathryn Wilson reviewed the vidoes with Thao Dinh, one of our interpreters....and then are meeting with each of the teachers to provide mentorship and coaching in one-on-one sessions. Its awesome to see that this format is working well because it could be a precursor to ongoing feedback during the school year when we are not in country. One of the teachers said the ideas and suggestions that she was getting from Kathryn and Judy was really helpful to her in thinking about specific ways how to expand on her lesson plans.

In a feel-good moment of the day...I sat in on a video consultation with a teacher from Danang. The teacher explained that the boy in the video received his first pair of hearing aids from our team during our January Mobile Mission. This pair of Oticon hearing aids was his first ever. Though he was 4 years old, he had a moderate hearing loss. The teacher said he was making great progress. It was really cool to think that we gave this boy a pair of hearing aids and now his teacher was here -- in Level 2 to boot -- talking with two outstanding professionals about how to help this boy continue to develop his spoken language skills. Awesome.

Getting Things Started

2011-06-27T23:11:00.001+07:00

Our Level 2 teacher training program kicked off bright and early this morning. We had welcome speeches, a song, introductions, and a pre-workshop test for the participants to gauge how much learning they retained from last year's program. This group of about 55 teachers from schools across South Vietnam passed last year's final test, meriting them placement in this year's advanced course. Over the next 2 weeks, we'll engage them in lecture and practicum to help build on their understanding about listening and spoken language in young children with hearing loss. Our goal is to provide them with strategies and tools that they can use in their own classrooms back home.

After a delicious lunch of stir fry, pho, and bread, teachers and Global Foundation professionals gathered in the cheerful lecture hall to start the learning process. The next three hours were spent reviewing course material from last year's program focused on audiology, speech pathology, early intervention, and auditory-verbal education.

At 5:00 pm, families starting pulling up to Thuan An on their motorbikes with young children in tow. Thuy and I gave them a preview of the parent program that will run for the next month. The first two weeks comprise of evening series of training sessions and practicum. The second two weeks, their children will have the opportunity to meet with our audiology team for hearing testing, troubleshooting and possible fitting of hearing aids. These appointments will be followed by private consultations with our auditory-verbal therapists and speech pathologists who can address questions related to spoken language development.

We also have a webinar series that will connect families in Vietnam with families in the United States for knowledge sharing about hearing loss issues. The parents were riveted to learn about the program's aspects and eagerly signed up for the different facets. There were familiar faces from last summer's initative and it was warming to see how their children had progressed.

The first parent program started at 6 pm with an overview of audiology fundamentals. Lauri Nelson talked about how to read audiograms, care for hearing aids, how listening and language are intertwined, and how parents can take part in the process of ensuring their child's development.

At the end of the program, our guests Helen Woolard and Charlie Shafer gave presentations about what it is like to have hearing loss. Helen is a 20-year-old photography student out of University of North Carolina who has bilateral cochlear implants. Charlie is a 15-year-old high school student from Seattle who has a severe to profound hearing loss and wears hearing aids. Both of them are examples of success -- but beyond their hearing loss, they are just wonderful human beings. I appreciate them coming here to share their personal stories with the families. One father later remarked that to have our team of very talented professionals and Charlie and Helen in Vietnam gave him hope that he might just be able to provide a better future for his young daughter who is hard of hearing after all.

It was a full day but an amazing, heart-warming one...the perfect start to what I know will be an incredible month of inspiration, learning, and empowerment. I'm very grateful to all of those who are with us for contributing their time and expertise to the Global Foundation's efforts.

The Eleventh Hour

2011-06-26T16:15:00.011+07:00

This afternoon, a contingent of motorbikes pulled up at Thuan An Center. The drivers were anonymous with faces completely swathed in scarves and handkerchiefs to protect against heat and dust. They dismounted from the motorbikes, peeled off the layers, and ducked into Thuy's office wth tired eyes but beaming smiles. Thuy and I looked up from our work and instantly rose to welcome them. The first participants in our summer training program had just arrived!

The arrival of the first group of teachers to the center marked the end of a week of preparation -- and what a week it was with teamwork and creative thinking in maximum overdrive. The DINKY hotel, our home base, constructed new beds and rearranged room configurations just so that a few more people on our team could stay there. Plans were laid for each day's events at Thuan An in terms of room logistics, equipment needs, and the like. The Vietnamese participants are boarding at the center so the cleaning crews were hard at work. The cooks were busy stocking up on food to serve all the participants across the entire month. Last minute translations and daily schedules were nailed down. In a developing country, everything from downloading video files to securing extension cords to printing handbooks of materials take extra patience, time, and effort.

I learned this week that 60 families of children with hearing loss under the age of six have applied to attend Thuan An next school year. Sister Dao, the education director, and Thuy shared the news with a mixture of apprehension and excitement, wondering how they are going to serve all these children while also looking forward to that challenge. There is a shortage of early intervention teachers with any knowledge of auditory-verbal practices. Dao commented that our program is instrumental to changing that. We're helping to increase the pool of qualified candidates to help young children with hearing loss, not only at Thuan An Center, but across South Vietnam.

Earlier this week, a mother dropped by Thuy's office with her 18-month-old son to learn more about the parent component of our summer's event. Her son was identified at 11 months. The family is enrolled in the early intervention program here and his spoken language is progressing well. Thuy thinks he will be a real star. It was a bright moment to meet this mother and child that was contrasted the next day when a family of a six year old girl came to visit. The young girl had a severe hearing loss and no language at all -- no spoken language, no sign language, nothing. No way to communicate. So there is much work yet to be done.

As our Vietnam Deaf Education Program enters its second year, it was been warming to watch Thuy develop her expertise alongside the teachers in our program. Last summer, I had to convince her that including a parent program in our summer training efforts would be beneficial. "Why do the parents need to be involved?" I remember her asking me. She agreed to give it a go, and we had a remarkable turnout and level of interest. The parents took initative to start a parent group at the conclusion of our program last summer so they could continue to support each other. The response continued during our January mobile mission -- everywhere we went in Vietnam, the parents came out in droves to learn how they could help their children. This summer, we have 30 parents signed up for the evening sessions, and Thuy remarked, "That is not enough - we need more."

Thuy also has greater awareness about the importance of ongoing audiological care and, as a result, is moving to improve the audiology services at her own center. More proof that increasing awareness is like a spark igniting a fire.

We had a lot of lighter moments this week...the Australin consulate granted Thuy's funding request for new VRA equipment. It was wnnderful to have the equipment arrive the week before our audiology program starts so that we can use it in the training efforts. Thuy, Dao, and I had a memorable few hours conducting a photo shoot with the newly installed equipment to commemorate the occasion.

One hot afternoon, we were in a planning meeting when suddenly Dao reached over the table for this high tech bug swatter of Thuy's that looks more like a sophisticated tennis racket. This petite nun dressed in her habit swung with dexterity that belied her years and absolutely NAILED a mosquito. As the electric swatter zapped the unassuming bug, she did a fist pump, pointed to her glasses and grinned at me, "See what four eyes can do?!"

Speaking of talented nuns....Thuy asked sister Phuong to take on the interpretation of the evening parent program. Phuong said she'd prefer not to because of her commitment to attending evening Mass. Thuy, who is a devout Catholic herself, urged, "you can pray in the morning and all day long..pray pray pray....and then come to the center and be an interpreter in the evening." Phuong thought about it for a bit and decided that she could provide the service after all - and with eyes sparkling, said, "God willing."

The team started arriving yesterday one by one and I went to meet them. It is always so fun to see the excitement on their faces as they exit the airport. We've got a great group here with a few more professionals due to arrive later in the month. The airport runs concluded for the time being this afternoon....we've got our team in place, conducted our first weekly meeting tonight, and enjoyed an entertaining dinner together. We're ready to go. Deeeeeeeeeep breath....it all start at 8 am local time tomorrow!

What A Bit of Intelligent Optimism Can Do....

2011-06-20T16:31:00.007+07:00

Making my way to catch the flight to Vietnam, I did a double-take at an advertising sign that read, "The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck." I smiled to myself and thought, "yeah, that's a fitting send-off."

This program that we're about to orchestrate this summer is our largest yet. Strings of tension, if you will, all designed to help the youngest members of Vietnamese society with hearing loss set on a path to a brighter future.

I arrived in Ho Chi Minh City early yesterday morning. I have been to Vietnam several times now, but I still get an adrenline rush from the palpable energy that immediately hits upon exiting the airport. If a sense of place is what you're looking for as a traveler, well, Vietnam has it in spades. As the driver navigated through the city, I took in the sights of an industrious culture that never seems to find any challenge insurmountable. Shirtless men balanced themselves precariously on a wooden plank above the traffic to navigate a thick curtain of cable wire draped from pole to pole. Motorbikes piled high with -- pick your favorite --plastic bottles, potted plants, textiles, concrete pilings, and/or chicken coops ---demonstrated that persistence can triumph over the laws of physics (at least temporarily).

The city sights slowly dissipitated to a country scene, honking horns and concrete giving way to lush greenery and rivers. As we entered Lai Thieu, home to Thuan An Center, our Vietnam partner and the host of this summer's program, it felt like a coming home of sorts - comfortable and familiar.

Thuy, the director of Thuan An Center, met me at our hotel, the DIN KY. She gave me a warm hug and we immediately fell into easy banter as if we had just seen each other yesterday. We have known each other for almost 2.5 years now. As we have led efforts to build this program from grandoise vision to one of impactful reality, we've become good friends. Thuy took me to her center for a tour of her new early intervention building that is under construction. Funded by the Japan embassy, this two-story, brick facility dovetails wonderfully with our teacher training and audiology efforts. The hope is that this center will become a model of excellence in auditory-verbal deaf education for South Vietnam.

We wrapped up the day with dinner at the DIN KY, a wonderful 3 hours, outside in the warm evening, two friends from opposite ends of the world getting caught up on each other's news.

Today was spent reviewing the logistics of our program. There are four components to this month-long training effort: Level 1 and Level 2 teacher training, Audiology program, and a Parent Program. This summer's training is part of our larger Deaf Education Program designed to empower teachers and families from 35 schools throughout Vietnam and hospital medical teams with the skills and resources they need to help young children with hearing loss develop listening and spoken language. About 900 children are expected to benefit from our multi-year effort.

Level 2 comprises of 55 of 60 teachers who passed the final test last summer and are returning for more advanced training. It speaks volumes about our team's efforts to have such a high number of participants returning--- and the number would be even higher save for some pregnancies that prevented travel. Level 1 training is for 40 teachers either new to the program or those that didn't fare so well on last year's test.

The Audiology program provides in-depth audiology training for about 20 "educational audiologists", hearing aid dispensers, and medical teams from two HCMC hospitals. The Parent Program is made up of 30 parents who will travel to the center for an evening series to learn about how they can help their children with hearing loss. The Parent Program includes consultations with our professionals to address specific questions about their children. Our audiologists will also fit hearing aids on young children who need them but whose families cannot afford them.

The team starts arriving this Friday from the US and Hong Kong, and our program starts next Monday. With over 600 pages of translated material....8 interpreters...over 150 participants....16 professionals....8 graduate students....and the energy and commitment of everyone involved, well, it promises to be quite a show. I'm reminded of the Margaret Mead sentiment "never underestimate the power of a small group of passionate people to change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

Getting Ready for the Big Show!

2011-06-15T21:34:00.003+07:00

On June 27, 2011, over 150 Vietnamese teachers, families, hearing aid dispensers, and medical teams will travel to Thuan An Center to board and take part in our second summer training program. This month-long program includes participants from 35 schools for the deaf and area hospitals. We are looking forward to seeing familiar faces returning from last year to build on their knowledge, while also welcoming a new group of participants.

Our team of 16 professionals from the US and Hong Kong are scheduled to arrive in the coming days. It is going to be quite a month with lectures, practicum, video analysis, and 1:1 consultations by day for teachers, an evening program and private consultations for families, a webinar series, and a brand spanking new Audiology program designed to provide more in-depth audiology training for those who do such work at the schools and hospitals. We'll fit hearing aids on children from low-income families. Its all been designed by our talented team in conjunction with Thuan An Center and Ho Chi Minh City University with the goal of helping the Vietnamese acquire the awareness, tools, and expertise to help young children with hearing loss develop listening and spoken language skills.

It all starts on June 27....so mark your calendar....and thanks for checking back in so we can share our adventures with you! Meanwhile, we invite you to read through our past blog posts highlighting the events of our January Mobile Mission and our 2010 summer training program. Check out our website to read more about our team and project in Vietnam. Cam On!

And That's A Wrap!

2011-01-22T19:42:00.002+07:00

Three cities and five destinations spread across south and central Vietnam over a two week span...no doubt our January Mobile Mission was a jammed-packed adventure but a very successful one at that.

Our team did an amazing job sharing their expertise to approximately 400 people between our school visits and Saturday lecture. If anyone needed evidence that compassionate hearts and commitment to the task at hand can turn in stellar results, look no further than our experience. The team prepared hearing aid kits in the back of our van on the bumpy, curvy ride from Dalat to Ho Chi Minh City, overcame challenges like electricity outages, coughs, and technology snafus to help teachers and families. They got up early and worked late to deliver on their mission..all while keeping their sense of humor fully intact. We explored the sights together, had a lot of fun, and enjoyed many hearty belly laughs along the way.

I am very grateful to Judy Simser, Jane Madell, Lea Watson, Charlotte Ducote, Sharad Govil, and Joanne Restivo for volunteering their time and expertise to our efforts. Their passion and energy was contagious and they certainly left their mark with the Vietnamese people we had the good fortune to meet during our journey this month.

This has been a wonderful experience for the opportunity to spend time with the teachers and families at their home schools. The programs in Dalat, Da Nang, and Ho Chi Minh City all face different situations and challenges but share the consistent desire to to well by the children they serve. We fit 95 hearing aids on children who needed them. We trained people who do audiology work, we mentored teachers about auditory-verbal strategies, and inspired hope in parents that their children can indeed grow up to become successful, independent members of society.

I"m getting emails from other parts of Vietnam and from potential partners about our quality work. We are on the right track with this Deaf Education program and I look forward to continuing our efforts with Ms. Thuy at Thuan An Center and other Vietnamese professionals to empower their health care community, teachers, and families with the awareness, training support, and technology that their children with hearing loss need.

Our team spent two hours assessing our Mobile Mission experiences over some well deserved drinks and snacks on our last night in Da Nang. We all feel that more audiology training would be helpful in the schools and hospitals. Newborn hearing screening and audiology care and support are rarities here. The Vietnamese government does not yet recognize audiology or speech pathology as professions. Among other things, this has hampered university training in these areas. The government and insurance companies also do not currently provide any funding for hearing aids or cochlear implants which has created challenges for families to access such technology. We saw many children with profound hearing loss in these two weeks alone that would benefit from cochlear implants, and yet they likely will not get them. Hearing aids need to be more accessible and shouldn't take months to repair.

Follow-up support in the way of trained professionals in early intervention, auditory-verbal therapy, and speech pathology would ensure these children succeed after they are fitted with hearing devices. Support mechanisms should be developed for parents and kids with hearing loss who are mainstreamed in neighborhood schools.

In spite of these challenges, there are many positives and bright spots of potential. The teachers care and are eager to learn new techniques to help their children develop spoken language and acquire education. The families, like families everywhere, want the best for their children and will do just about anything to ensure their success. Everywhere we went, the turnout was phenomenal. There is no question there is great desire to improve the landscape in Vietnam for children who are deaf and hard of hearing, both in present time and for the future.

The Global Foundation's goal with its Vietnam Deaf Education program is to provide the mechanisms for increased awareness and improvements through education, training, and access to technology so that the Vietnamese have all the tools to make sound choices for their hard of hearing and deaf children.

Our Mobile Mission has drawn to a close, but the Global Foundation is already looking ahead to our next effort. We are conducting the second year of our teacher training program at Thuan An Center in a four-week program between June-July 2011. Over 100 teachers and families are scheduled to travel from the 35 schools in our program to attend the training. Many of these participants are returnees from last summer's effort and we look forward to helping them build on their knowledge. We also plan to engage in family consultations, hearing testing, and fit hearing aids on children who need them. Our team is devising a special audiology workshop for hearing professionals, medical students, and those who audiology work in the schools. It promises to be another successful event and we are all looking forward to it.

This will be the last blog entry until we land in Vietnam again in June. Thank you for following along with us..and I hope you found it engaging! On behalf of everyone at the Global Foundation, thank you for your continued support and interest in our work. We are very grateful. I hope you will stay in touch with us....please visit our website at http://www.childrenwithhearingloss.org/ for more information about our programs and to sign up for our quarterly newsletter.

Meanwhile, until June....Camon and Tam Biet!

Learning to Listen and Speak

2011-01-21T23:32:00.001+07:00

Today, our team paid a visit to the Center for Supporting and Developing Inclusive Education for People with Disabilities. The small facility with a warm vibe is based in Ho Chi Minh City and offers early intervention support with one on one therapy sessions for young children with hearing loss and their families. "Graduates" of the center go on to mainstream schools where many are succeeding in classrooms alongside their hearing peers.

When we arrived, several families were enjoying the little playground in the back of the center in advance of their therapy sessions. Parents seemed to know each other well and engaged in relaxed conversation while their children played on the slides and swing sets. Everyone had a smile on their face and it was just a cheerful, happy environment.

Quite a few of the children here have cochlear implants and the rest are fitted with high performance hearing aids. The emphasis is on spoken language communication only. The center's therapists have been trained in auditory-verbal techniques over the past several years by visiting professionals from around the world.

Judy and Lea observed some of the therapy sessions and were impressed by the caliber of the teaching and the level of expertise of both parents and therapists alike. They later gathered with the therapists for a few hours to offer feedback from the observations. Their suggestions built on the type of teaching that was already being done rather than focusing on basic auditory-verbal concepts that they felt necessary at the other school programs we visited. Judy and Lea's day wrapped up with a 3-hour lecture to about 15 parents from the center, all of whom came armed with great questions and interest to learn.

Meanwhile, Jane and Joanne were in the center's audiology room, a nice space outfitted with good testing equipment. They tested hearing of young children from the center and two other schools in the area and counseled parents on their children's hearing loss issues.

Over lunch, I asked the director of the center what she felt was necessary for the future success of early intervention programs for children with hearing loss in Vietnam. Without hesitation, Ms Ha said, " audiology support for young children." The hospitals are not widely engaged in newborn hearing screening which results in children getting identified later than they would otherwise. The earlier a child is identified with hearing loss, fit with appropriate hearing technology, and provided with early intervention therapy support, the greater the potential for that child to develop listening and spoken language skills. Ms Ha expressed that better awareness and understanding of pediatric hearing loss amongst doctors and broader implementation of follow-up care by trained professionals are essential for children with hearing loss to succeed.

Making A Mark in Da Nang

2011-01-20T06:02:00.003+07:00

We arrived in Da Nang late Saturday night -- a working class, seafaring city on the coast of central Vietnam. Fishing boats dot the harbor and ocean breezes sweep away the pollution from the dust and traffic. The rolling waves and soft sands of the China Sea are just around the corner from the main drag through town. Crumbling sidewalks and dilapidated three story buildings are giving way to development with a futuristic bridge serving as a proud symbol of the revitalization that is washing through Da Nang ast a rapid pace. We spent four days here working at the Thanh Tam Special School, a beautiful facility managed by the Sisters of Saint Paul.

The teachers here are loving and caring about the children they serve. The expertise is limited though with many of the teachers self-taught or learning from short courses and each other. Nevertheless, they were anxious to learn new teaching strategies and immersed themselves in Judy and Lea's teaching with full enthusiasm.

The typical instruction in the classrooms for small children was taught by rote -- a teacher would stand in front of the classroom and have the children repeat a series of sentences after her such as "Nina is crying"..."Why is Nina crying?"...""She is crying because she is sad". Such lessons didn't take advantage of real life, present opportunities to learnto listen, develop language, nor were they tied to any lesson plan or specific objective or goal. Worse, the children looked bored and uninterested.

Judy and Lea mentored teachers through lecture and practicum, coaching them on a variety of auditory-verbal strategies for children with hearing loss including how to identify goals, assess cognitive and language skills, and use approaches to address weakness areas.

Judy offered suggestions to the teacher she was working with and helped transform her classroom. One day, they led a whole session together about different kinds of animals, the sounds they make and the things they do. Judy, the teacher, and children were flying around the room like birds, jumping like kangaroos, etc. It was engaging and provided elements to practice listening. The kids loved it and were shouting out different ideas about what the animals do. The teacher was positively glowing too.

While Lea and Judy were mentoring teachers, Jane and Joanne counseled famlies about their childen's hearing acumen and fit hearing aids on those who needed them. The school's staff person who does audiology work here and an ENT doctor from Hanoi shadowed them. By the end of our time at Thanh Tan, they were both more astute at testing hearing and fitting hearing aids. They should be able to apply their new knowledge after we leave. I invited the ENT doctor to join our summer training at Thuan An Center and she enthusiastically accepted.

We hosted parent meetings on each of three evenings for the parents of Thanh Tan. They came in droves with the room packed with about 50 people every night- a wonderful testment to the desire of the parents to find out what they needed to know to help their children listen and develop spoken language.

Last night was our final parent meeting - a 2-hour Q and A session. The questions yet again shed light on the widespread gaps of service that currently exists in Vietnam for children with hearing loss and their families. A parent was concerned about her daughter's progress in mainstream school after leaving Thanh Tam in an environment of large classrooms and no special support. Parents asked myriad questions about hearing technology and language milestones that reflected a need for audiology services . There are many that have been waiting for months for hearing parts to arrive at the dispenser for their children's broken hearing aids. Meanwhile, their children go without and lose precious time for developing auditory skills.

I offered some of my personal experience as someone who grew up with a profound hearing loss in mainstream schools. I shared that its difficult for me to hear the news on the radio and I know I miss ambient conversation. So, my love for reading helped me with vocabulary and awareness of the wider world. Reading has been a real equalizer in the acquisition of knowledge and information. I also suggested that parents find and cultivate that talent that is innate in every child. Doing so helps with self-esteem, friendships, and provides an identity that has nothing to do with the hearing loss. The world is a big, exciting place with much to see and do. Get out and explore and experience it all with their children. The richer the life experience, the easier it is to transcend hearing loss and find those talents and interests. Finally, I encouraged the parents to believe in their children and their potential to learn to listen and talk. Help them aspire to be the best they can be.

The Thanh Tam school is a loving, warm environment and we were treated very well. The sisters were always looking out for us. They took us around to see the sights and fed us with way too much good food. The banter was easy and we all became fast friends. It made for a wonderful stay. The sisters, families, and teachers repeatedly appealed to us to come back and help them continue to develop their early intervention program. Our team agreed there is great potential here and we were grateful for the opportunity to help them out for a few days.

Spreading the News

2011-01-17T04:12:00.001+07:00

We hosted our parent program for the Binh Thanh School for Hearing Impaired Children on the 11th floor of our own hotel. The school's permit doesn't allow for gatherings there after the school day. I set up a sign in the lobby directing people to the 11th floor but the logistics were a bit tricky because one had to take the elevator to the 10th floor and walk up the stairs to the 11th. My concerns that parents wouldn't find us were relieved when they started coming in to the meeting room just before the 6 pm start time. Some were shy, some wore grateful smiles, and some carried a bit of anxiety with them...but the fact that the 30+ parents came at all was a wonderful testament to the innate nature of most parents - to do the best they can to help their children Vietnam's culture is such that parents are not really encouraged to participate in their children's education - that this is the job of the teachers. Since parents and families are the ones that spend the most time with a child in most situations, it is important they know how they can help their child develop language and cognitive skills.

Several teachers joined the meeting as well - including a handful all the way from Dalat. One of the teachers, Sau, took initiative to direct traffic upstairs to our meeting room from the lobby. She even created a sign to post on a tree outside on the street. I found out about this the next day and was just so touched by Sau's thoughtfulness and support.

There have been many instances of people offering up their support to our efforts here. One ouf our interpreters, Ms Gai, normally charges an hourly rate to provide intepretation services. For us, she said, no...what you are doing to help deaf children and their familes is important I don't want any payment. She not only worked the parent program, but also two days at Binh Thanh and at our Saturday lecture in HCMC. I finally convinced her to accept a stipend for her wonderful efforts and generousity of time and spirit.

Binh Thanh School for Hearing Impaired Children sits on a busy street in Ho Chi Minh City's district 3. Our agenda there was similar to that of Dalat with Jane and Joanne leading audiology lecture and training and fitting of young children with hearing aids. Judy, Lea, and Charlotte led lecture and practicum with teachers and families about auditory-verbal practices and techniques. The school took a day off for our program's teaching. On the next day, they had classes with the young children and our trio of professionals visited the classrooms and coached the teachers with their own children.

We had a visitng school located 4.5 hours away from Binh Thanh that sent 7 families to receive hearing aids. Our schedule was very tight with 5 other children already arranged for fitting on this day, but Jane and Joanne promised they would try to find the time to get all of them in. And..they did it......with the help of Sharad Govil, an audiologist from Phonak Asia and some trainees from Cat Tuong a distributor. After the 7 children were fit, they all returned to the room for a photo shoot that was just so endearing. The headmistress of the school caught me in the hallway and gave me the warmest hug in gratitude. It was a wonderful moment.

Sharad is volunteering his time to the Global Foundation and complements our A team with his valuable expertise. We are very grateful to Sharad and Phonak for donating 15 Naida hearing aids to our Mobile Mission efforts.

On Friday, Thuy and I met with Ms Ha, the newly appointed dean of the special education department at HCMC University. We reviewed our program's success to date over a cup of tea and talked about some potential ideas for furthering our collaboration. From there, we headed down the hall to meet with the vice president of the university who is responsible for foreign relations. HCMC University works with 17 other universities around the world, including a few in the United States, to provide distance learning,, student exchange, and training programs. It is exciting to think about possibilities to expand our efforts in Vietnam.

Saturday was our lecture to over 200 medical professionals, teachers, education students, and families at a center in Ho Chi Minh City. Cochlear Asia and Cat Tuong wer the main supporters of this event. It was a great success and our team did a terrific job sharing their expertise with the broader community.

Seeds of Change

2011-01-12T23:51:00.004+07:00

Flexibility and creative thinking are essential ingredients to the success of our work in Vietnam. This Mobile Mission’s agenda, for example, was coordinated with each Vietnamese school for the deaf, but no amount of preparation can account for the spontaneous opportunity and unexpected twists that arise. One needs to be able to adjust on the fly. During our time here in Dalat, I have enjoyed watching our seasoned team as they figured out the elements of their vast knowledge that would be of most value to share with the teachers and families given their specific level of understanding and needs.

Most teachers of the deaf in Dalat have just basic knowledge of auditory-verbal techniques but there are bright spots. Lam Dong School for the Hearing Impaired has classrooms where young children are encouraged to listen and use their voice to speak. They have about six families that come once a week for auditory-verbal therapy. Judy and Lea corralled these families into a room for an impromptu play group today and encouraged them, the early intervention teacher, and the director of the school to establish such a group ongoing. Play groups are valuable because they foster interaction between teachers and families to further the child’s development as well as provide opportunity for the children to develop social and behavioral skills. Judy and Lea quickly revised the schedule and set up an afternoon of lecture and practicum that catered to this group of early intervention promise. They advised the families and teachers about how they could work together to ensure the children develop auditory language throughout the day, both at home and at school.

During dinner with the school administrators tonight, the director volunteered that her staff was going to incorporate opportunities for more family involvement in their child’s learning process – including setting up a play group in March. She had listened and understood the value of family engagement.

Our days here in Dalat were busy, jammed-packed with our team, teachers, families, and kids flying around between the various elements of our program. It was a success and I'm proud of our crew. I always get a rush from the humanity of it all. The passion of our professionals. The intense focus and enthusiasm of the teachers as they soak up the knowledge. The earnest face of the resident "audiologist" as Jane coached her on how to test hearing. The big smile on the young early intervention teacher as Judy mentored her on techniques during a demonstration. The gratitude and steadfast determination and hope of the families. And, of course, the simple innocence of the children that we are all working hard to serve.

Our team left Lam Dong with administrators, teachers and parents buzzing with ideas and we most certainly left a mark. They have an attitude of positive thinking and sense of possibility. I am hopeful that we planted seeds of change that will bear fruit down the road.

Today was an off day, spent exploring Dalat as a group before the seven hour drive back to Saigon in our comfortable, big van. Next up is a program at Binh Thanh School for Hearing Impaired Children that starts tomorrow at 7 am. No time for rest!

Promise and Heartache in Dalat

2011-01-11T22:44:00.000+07:00

Late Sunday night, we rolled into Dalat, a gem of a little city tucked away in the hills of rural Vietnam. The fresh, clean air and mild temperatures were a welcome change from the chaos and heat of Ho Chi Minh. French-inspired townhouses line the winding streets and manicured gardens of bright poinsettias and dahlias are everywhere. Crops of strawberries, coffee, and potatoes carpet the landscape alongside floral nurseries in the hill villages overlooking the downtown core. There’s a laid back vibe here. The people are friendly and the pace is slow. Cafes around town invite casual conversation and strung-up hammocks suggest afternoon respite. My morning run alongside the lake rewarded me with distractions of birds fishing and horses grazing. This is a tourist destination, yet Dalat’s soul is still very much alive.

The Lam Dong School for the Hearing Impaired was our home base during our program in Dalat. Two other schools for the deaf sent teachers and parents to join in our training and audiology efforts. When we arrived at the school in the morning of a bluebird day, we were warmly received by the headmaster and deputy director over a cup of tea before heading upstairs to a sun-splashed room filled with about 30 teachers. The energy and anticipation was palpable and with our own team’s excitement and passion, it was a feel good start to our event. After introductions, we split up into two groups…Jane and Joanne headed to a small audiology room while Judy, Lea, and Charlotte led instruction in the main meeting room.

The general agenda called for Judy, Lea, and Charlotte to lecture and lead practicum on language development and auditory-verbal techniques to early intervention and kindergarten teachers, and provide consultations to families. Meanwhile, Jane and Joanne provided training to those who do audiology at the schools about best practices. The schools used our guidelines to identify children who needed new hearing aids but whose families could not afford them. These children were scheduled appointments with Jane and Joanne for hearing testing and hearing aid fitting from our supply of 95 Solar Ear, Oticon, and Phonak hearing aids. The audiology staffs from the schools sat in on the hearing testing and fitting, and Cat Tuong, a major distributor of hearing instruments, sent along a representative to learn from Jane. Each evening, we had a two-hour family lecture for about 40 parents and teachers covering audiology and spoken language development.

The children filed, wide-eyed and shy, one at a time inside the little audiology room clutching to their parents’ hands or pant legs. All that apprehension magically melted away as Jane would immediately connect with the child whether through words or actions and then work with him or her to test hearing in such a compassionate, endearing way. The child would sit with these BIG earphones on their tiny heads, and would listen oh-so-seriously for the tones that Joanne was ringing in through the audiometer. Jane gave each child her full care and attention, coaching them to respond to the sounds. Al of us in that room were silent cheerleaders during these testing sessions – Vietnamese and American alike. Every time a tone rang out, you could sense the held breaths and the silent “come on, come on” words of hope and encouragement that the child would respond.

The more residual hearing that a child has, the more beneficial the hearing aids will be. Cochlear implants, which are prescribed to those with profound losses, are still rare and cost-prohibitive in countries like Vietnam. Children with severe to profound hearing loss can be fit with hearing aids. But, they will struggle to comprehend speech and will require extensive support from trained teachers and professionals – a commodity in limited supply in Vietnam and something the Global Foundation is working to address.

It felt like a warm embrace every time Joanne would fit hearing aids on a child. The parent’s face of gratitude just said it all.

There were stories within stories too. We had a four year-old boy who needed hearing aids but because the family was poor, he was not attending school. Jane told the teachers she would only fit the child if they promised he would be enrolled. If he didn’t attend, Jane insisted that the hearing aids be returned to us. The teachers agreed to work with the family and Jane fit the child with hearing instruments. I’m hopeful that this little boy is now on a course for a brighter future.

There were difficult situations that just tore at my heart. Jane met me and Thuy in the hallway at one point to explain that the little girl she had just tested was so profoundly deaf that a hearing aid would not benefit at all. What should we do? Should we draw from our precious and limited supply to give to this child when another would benefit more? How do we tell this mother that we cannot give her daughter a hearing aid? The three of us teared up as we battled through that tough decision.

It is one thing to set guidelines for who gets a hearing aid and who does not But when you see the family, see the cute little boy or girl who is about to be denied…well, it just changes you and makes you want to work even harder to fix things. Financing for hearing aids and cochlear implants is not available from the government or health insurance companies in Vietnam. This needs to change. A child who has a hearing loss has nothing wrong with their brains, and with the hearing instruments they need, can go on to lead successful lives in hearing society. In my opinion, to shortchange a child’s potential simply because of lack of access is immoral.

The Van Rolls Out..

2011-01-09T05:41:00.004+07:00

With Judy Simser's arrival late last night, the Mobile Mission team is now all together here in Vietnam. Though most of us hadn't met each other before, we all quickly jelled over dinner. This is a great group of vibrant, fun professionals who are all very passionate about their work.

Lea Watson arrived first on Friday night - an auditory verbal therapist with over 30 years of experience and her own practice in Massachusetts. Our audiologists Jane Madell and Joanne Restivo landed on Saturday. Jane is nationally known for her work with young children who have severe and profound hearing loss, and selection and management of hearing aids and cochlear implants. Joanne Restivo is a pediatric audiologist for New York Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center. Charlotte Ducote settled in shortly after; she is Director, Division of Communicative Disorders, at Ochsner Health System in New Orleans, and has served as a speech-language pathologist for Operation Smile’s Vietnam team for over a decade. Judy Simser is an internationally-acclaimed speaker on the education of children with hearing loss and the former director of the Auditory-Verbal Program at the Children's Hospital in Ottawa, Canada.

We've got a great group and I have no doubt we're in for a terrific adventure ahead. We're rolling out this morning for the 5 hour drive to Dalat and the Lam Dong School for Hearing Impaired Children. Thuy Nguyen, director of Thuan An Center is riding along with us. We have four boxes and two bags of toys donated by local HCMC expats and a hearing aid distributor, reams of presentation materials, audiology equipment, and piles of suitcases in our van. Its jammed packed....but we're all excited to get going!

US Consulate Endorsement and a Plate of Fries

2011-01-06T20:00:00.002+07:00

Can't help but feel on top of the world after a day like this....

Thuy pulled up at my hotel on her motorbike and gave me a big grin as we spotted each other in the lobby. It has been several months since last summer's teacher training program, but we fell into immediate easy banter as if we had just seen each other yesterday.

For those of you new to our blog, Thuy is the director of the Thuan An Center for Hearing Impaired Children and the Global Foundation's partner in this Deaf Education Program we're conducting in Vietnam. I first met Thuy in 2008. The time I spent at her school was the catalyst for my starting the Global Foundation in an effort to help children who are deaf and hard of hearing in the developing world have access to the resources and education they need for life success.

It has been fun growing my relationship with Thuy over the past few years as we've worked to build this Deaf Education program from a mere proposal and pipe dream to something tangible involving 35 schools of the deaf, over 100 teachers and families, a wide swath of American professionals, and 900 children with hearing loss.

Thuy and I headed out in a taxi to the Vietnamese PACCOM office to meet with government officials there. We reviewed last summer's efforts, discussed our future plans, and squared away the necessary paperwork. The goal is to get our permit extended from a 1 year to a multi-year permit. Our contact representative who is helping us out there is so incredibly positive and supportive of what we’re doing.

The day wrapped up with a meeting at the US Consulate. Kit came to our opening ceremony last summer and we just hit it off over lunch that day. She is such a fun person with a big heart and can do spirit. I met up with her a few times after our initial meeting for coffee and her sage advice about working in country.

Today, Kit welcomed me upstairs into the consulate offices. She took me around on a tour of the new facility and I was particularly impressed by a library open to the public filled with all sorts of magazines and books ranging from world issues to pop culture (Kit kiddingly invited me back to enjoy a People magazine). We settled in her office to share travel stories and perspectives on foreign affairs and the various humanitarian efforts taking place around the world. An enjoyable way to pass the hour to be sure. I was invited to sign paperwork to receive a grant for our Deaf Education Program. The Global Foundation is very honored to get this measure of endorsement from the US Consulate. It is just terrific to have the support of both governments for our efforts here.

In between the two government meetings, Thuy and I kicked back and enjoyed each other's company in the hotel restaurant. We sat there for three hours talking about everything from this month's mobile mission to next summer’s training program to just sharing everyday life stories over a plate of skinny French fries and iced tea.

It was a fist-pump kind of day to be sure.

Fixing Ears In Cambodia

2011-01-05T16:01:00.006+07:00

I stepped off the busy thoroughfare in Phnom Penh, leaving the din of tuk-tuks and motorbikes behind me as I headed down a side street to the black gate of 7C. As I entered through the front door, I saw student and instructor talking quietly at a table in the far corner of the room. It was just another private tutorial session between the director of the clinic and an aspiring audiologist at All Ears Cambodia, but the picture exemplified the strong and direct connection that this NGO has with the local Khmer community.

I arrived in Ho Chi Minh City last weekend and enjoyed the sights and sounds as the Vietnamese celebrated the start of the New Year. Our Mobile Mission team is scheduled to arrive in a few days, but first on my agenda was a quick trip to Phnom Penh and All Ears Cambodia. This NGO is the largest of its kind in the country providing ear health care and audiology services to adults and over 6,000 Khmer children every year. Last November, I became fast friends with its director, Glyn Vaughan, a British audiologist with such infectious passion for his work. I looked forward to seeing him again and spending time with his talented staff.

The need for hearing health care is significant in Cambodia where meningitis and other diseases that cause hearing loss are still quite common. An estimated 2 million Khmer suffer from deafness and, according to Glyn, over half of these cases could have been prevented. The problem is exacerbated by a shortage of doctors and the decimation of the health care system after years of war and the Khmer Rouge regime.

All Ears Cambodia has clinics in four provinces; its Phnom Penh homebase a calm, feng shui inspired building of teak and tile. Glyn’s eyes always twinkle when he relegates the address’ notorious history. Legend has it that 7C used to be a brothel. One night, a fight broke out and the Khmer Rouge entered this building and killed everyone on site. The place was deemed haunted filled with the ghosts of the victims. When Glyn opened shop and no Khmer would step inside, he was encouraged to host a séance to eliminate the spirits. The spiritual medium confirmed that yes, indeed, there were ghosts, but he could not get them to leave. The good news? The resident ghosts were of the nice sort; they would do no harm or foul and they even had an affinity for Glyn. So now Glyn and his Khmer staff work alongside the kindred spirits of 7C.

Glyn has and continues to personally train his staff in a two-year curriculum covering basic audiology and treatment of ear problems. The topic of this particular day was genetics. I sat in as Vichar, the young Khmer student and Glyn gathered for 3 hours around a clinical table with a laptop and Khmer-English technical dictionary. With Glyn’s patient and thoughtful presentation combined with Vichar’s intense, tireless desire to learn, genetic concepts such as recessive inheritance and alleles were conveyed and understood across language barriers.

The organization has relationships with other NGOs in country and provides hearing health services to orphans, child laborers, victims of domestic violence, as well as those with HIV/AIDS, leprosy, and other afflictions. This morning, the place was bustling with activity as children played in and out of doors while adults queued up for appointments. NGO representatives brought children by for ear care services; a boy with a perforated ear drum was evaluated for surgery; and a sick baby clinging to her mother was treated for a middle ear infection. In the midst of it all were the All Ears Khmer staff calmly administering to their patients.

The education support and follow up care for children with hearing loss in Cambodia is minimal. There are just four schools for the deaf that provide both sign language and auditory-verbal instruction. The schools have an uncertain future as the French NGO that runs them is in the midst of turning management responsibility over to the government. Many children with hearing loss attend mainstream schools without the support mechanisms or trained teachers they need to ensure success. On the positive side, the Deaf Development Programme provides services and vocational training to older deaf citizens, and speech pathology is an emerging field.

I was captivated by All Ears’ newest clinic in Battambang. All Ears not only provides ear health care to this poor region, but also education and outreach to children about hygiene, nutrition, safe water, preventive medicine, and other practices that can help reduce disease and the potential for hearing infections. The clinic grows nutritious food on site and practices the principles it teaches in hopes to set an example for the citizens.

Seyha, one of the leaders of All Ears, positively bubbled as she shared their work in Battambang. Her passion driving rapid speech, she remarked to me, “We are working directly with the people …that is what I am most proud of. That we are helping our own people directly improve their lives.”

Yeah, that is what it is all about. Whether its helping communities in Cambodia or training teachers and families in Vietnam, working directly with the people is the most powerful way to make an difference.

One can’t help but get inspired by the compassion and humanity of All Ears Cambodia and I was honored to be a part of it all for a few days. I’m now headed back to Vietnam and am looking forward to getting our Mobile Mission efforts under way.

A New Chapter Begins!

2010-12-28T23:13:00.008+07:00

We're headed back to Vietnam for the Global Foundation's first Mobile Mission in Vietnam. The teachers who participated in our training program last summer at Thuan An Center asked us to visit their schools to further their professional development during the school year. So, we designed this Mobile Mission program which features in-classroom mentorship and audiology training on location at schools participating in our Vietnam Deaf Education program.

Our team of professionals will be traveling to Dalat, Da Nang, and Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) in January to visit families and teachers at schools for the deaf. Our team will work with early intervention and kindergarten teachers to reinforce the training from last summer's workshop about how to help young children with hearing loss develop listening and spoken language skills. We have audiology training for staff who do audiology at the schools There is an evening program designed to educate parents at each location about how to foster their children's language and cognitive development. Our team also has a supply of 95 hearing aids to fit on children who need them.

We are conducting a Saturday lecture about topics related to pediatric hearing loss in HCMC. Over 90 ENT staff, medical, speech language, and education students, teachers,and families are expected to attend. It should be another rewarding adventure and we invite you follow along with us as we blog from the field.

We're heading out to the airport. Please bear with us as we make our way across this big planet. Our executive director will kick things off with the blog on Jan 4 while visiting an NGO in Cambodia that is doing amazing audiology and hearing health care work in that country. Until then, check out our blog posts from last summer's terrific efforts to train 90 teachers and over 40 families from 35 schools in South Vietnam. For a summary of our work in Vietnam, we invite you to read our reflections in "The Ripple Effect of a Powerful Idea" published in the November 2010 ASHA Leader.

Much, much more to come. We look forward to sharing it all with you after January 4!

Summing It All Up....With Much More To Come!

2010-08-06T22:35:00.013+07:00

The teachers dropped by in pairs and small groups at Thuy's office to say their goodbyes. It was clear they didn't want to depart, stalling with small talk and lingering over the supply of Jolly Rangers and fresh dragon fruit on the table that served as a coincidental display of east meets west. Full of energy and inspiration and with bright eyes, the teachers shared their ideas about how they plan to apply the new knowledge gained. They expressed hope that our team would return, and offered ideas for topics to cover in next year's program. It was heartwarming to recognize that our team really made a significant impact in such a short amount of time.

When the conversations finally dried up, the teachers filed out the door and sandwiched themselves on motorbikes between scores of luggage and tote bags. With warm smiles and friendly waves, they pulled out of Thuan An Center, many with long drives ahead to return to their hometowns stretching across South Vietnam from Hue to the Mekong.

The day had started hours earlier with a goodbye ceremony that reflected the friendship and good will that has built up between our American team and the Vietnamese participants over the course of our one-month program. Our team sang a rendition of Singing in the Rain, much to their delight, and by the end of the song, they all had joined in the song's corresponding hand and body gestures with us. Small gifts were exchanged, photos were taken, and genuine laughter was in rich supply. The Oberkotter Foundation gave us a supply of little pink squishy brains to pass out to the participants as a reminder that language acquisition starts with the brain. The participants loved these little gadgets and carried them for inspiriation and good luck as they headed inside to take their final exam. Those who pass will be rewarded with a certificate of completion from HCMC University, which has endorsed our curriculum.

And with that, our program drew to a close.

There is much to reflect on and think about for the future. Our team did a wonderful job transferring knowledge and generating awareness about listening and spoken language acquisition, audiology practices, and early intervention methods. Their teaching efforts were actionable - the feedback we received from the participants was that they felt newly empowered - that they had learned techniques and strategies that they will be able to apply in their own homes and schools. Some parents already have, and it has been so awesome to hear their success stories. We increased understanding about the importance of early and consistent access to sound in children with hearing loss, and how parents can play a role in their child's language development.

The parent program was especially impactful. Informational resources and support networks just simply aren't there for parents in Vietnam. So, I am most proud of the fact that we were able to provide a measure of support, giving parents the tools and knowledge they need to help their children acquire language and the cognitive and social skills they need. The parents didn't know each other at the start of our program, but became fast friends. They took initiative to exchange emails and phone numbers and are laying plans to meet every few months, even those living in far away outlying areas. I have no doubt that they will support each other. The Global Foundation is currently exploring a variety of ways to support their continued learning - and that of the teachers - throughout the course of the next year.

This summer's training event may have concluded, but the foundation is just getting started. There is much potential for listening and spoken language development in children with hearing loss in Vietnam. Beyond our multi-year training program at Thuan An Center, we're also working with partners to determine how best to address gaps in hearing health care - such as the lack of audiologists, wide-spread access to hearing screens and hearing technology, and early intervention support for babies and toddlers with hearing loss younger than 5 years of age. The possibilities are exciting and we're looking forward to watching it all unfold.

This is our last blog entry until our next program gets underway. Thank you for following along in our experiences here - I hope it was insightful and somewhat entertaining to read! On behalf of everyone associated with the Global Foundation for Children with Hearing Loss, we appreciate your support and interest in our work. If you'd like to receive periodic updates about what we're up to, please subscribe to our quarterly newsletter at www.childrenwithhearingloss.org/contact.shtml

Cam On and Tam Biet - until our next adventure!

Believe In the Possibility of Everything

2010-08-03T21:15:00.004+07:00

Potential was the theme of the day. It started out with a webinar that Hillary set up with the Listening Center at John Hopkins where she works as an speech language pathologist. Hillary, Thuy, four Thuan An parents, and I gathered around a laptop in Thuy's office to talk about the training program and the learning gained over the past four weeks. An American parent of a child with hearing loss joined in on the other end and did a great job sharing personal advice and ideas with the Vietnamese parents. It was really cool to have these parents from two countries and cultures talking to each other through an online interface with interpreter support. It was also a wonderful opportunity to show Thuy and our Vietnamese friends how technology can facilitate shared learning across miles and oceans.

In the afternoon, I met with Kit from the American consulate, for a cup of coffee in HCM City. She attended our program's welcome ceremony back on July 12 and during that event's lunch, I enjoyed talking with her about humanitarian concerns and her own experiences working abroad. We vowed to meet again to continue our conversation and finally had the chance to do so today. We had a terrific discussion about the Global Foundation's future plans and potential opportunities through the American embassy's international programs. I appreciated her optimistic and pragmatic world view, and her astute advice for me and the foundation. She is a wonderful person and I am grateful to know her.

From there, I picked up a delivery of quality, low-cost hearing aids delivered to me by SolarEar, a nonprofit based in Brazil. The batteries are powered by the sun so they last months longer than regular batteries, saving even more money for the hearing aid owner. I look forward to sharing this great product with the teachers and families at our training program tomorrow.
There is such a need for quality, low-cost hearing aids in this part of the world.

The day wrapped up with a visit to the brand new Phonak audiology center. Recently opened, it is the only clinic in South Vietnam that provides OAE, ABR, VRA, and conventional hearing screening tests - free of charge - and also fits hearing aids and provides ongoing care and audiology services. The clinic is collaborating with a medical college to establish an audiology curriculum to foster the advent of audiology in Vietnam and close the gap in hearing care service provision.

So, baby steps...but positive change is happening.

I returned to Thuan An Center in the late afternoon. The review sessions had just wrapped up for the day and it was great to walk into Thuy's office to find the team relaxing and chatting together, having fun around a shared table. It has been very rewarding for me personally to see how well everyone has bonded over this four-week experience. It is just a terrific group.

After dinner, Hillary and I went upstairs to engage in two family consultations. The rest of our crew went out with some teachers for a motorbike ride to a porcelain factory and some Karaoke. That would have been something to see! I'll have to get the low-down on that tomorrow.

The review sessions are going well as the program winds down in its remaining days. I've been working with Thuy to square away the bills, and took out a large sum of Vietnamese currency today at the bank. Their denominations are in thousands. As I collected the money, I thought to myself, man, if only these were US dollars.....I am a millionaire --- in Vietnam. :-)

Tests Were Never So Fun As These

2010-07-31T08:22:00.002+07:00

One of the challenges that we've faced with the families in our consultation sessions has been that lack of audiograms and/or incomplete hearing test results. Without such information, it it very difficult to assess a child's hearing ability and whether they are getting access to sound through their hearing aids.

This morning, Jill, Ali, and Martha conducted a hearing test called VROCA with a 3-year-old girl and her father. The child does not have an audiogram and had never participated in such a hearing test before. Our team of audiologists made it a playful activity involving the headphones and a puppet VRA response toy. It took several demonstrations by Jill and her father, but this little girl was smart and she quickly caught on. At the end of the session, she correctly responded to a tone on her own for the first time. She laughed her sweet giggle as we all erupted in celebration of her success.

The session was short as her attention and interest waned, but it was a good first learning session. It warmed me to see her father smiling and really encouraged. With time, she will be prepared to conduct a full hearing test and get the measurements the family needs to properly assess her hearing.

Today was the last day of lectures as we enter our review sessions next week. Hillary was wrapping up the speech program with a lesson about books and how to make reading fun for children. The participants broke into small groups and practiced animated reading to each other. Another class had completed this exercise last week and were now studying with Helen. Helen proposed a competition between the two groups to determine who was best at reading aloud in entertaining fashion. When Hillary announced to the class that they had been challenged, one of the participants, Sister Mary Ann, sat straight up in her chair. This woman may be a nun who practices serenity, but she's got a great sense of fun and humor. Hillary asked who should represent the class in the challenge, and without missing a beat, everyone immediately pointed to Sister Mary Ann who grinned her wide smile, eyes bright in anticipation.

And so the competition began. Sister Mary Ann read from a child's book, pacing the room in animated verse with the book in hand, reading to us as if we were 4-year-old children. Phuong, from Helen's class, followed suit. She settled in her chair with a large water bottle acting as a baby, and involved the"baby" in the reading of a book while using many facial expressions and role playing to act out the scenes in the book.

I couldn't understand either of these contestants as they were reading aloud in Vietnamese, but it didn't even matter. It was such fun to watch them -- and all the teachers having a blast with it all. Phuong was announced the "winner' of the contest after getting the louder applause, but both of these women did a great job. With that, the week of lectures ended on a very high note.

Mary and Martha departed our program and were sent off with well wishes. The rest of us were treated to a second invitation to a family's home for dinner. This particular family owns the only workout gym in the province and lives in the building next door. It was ironic that as we ate too much of an amazing home-cooked meal, we could watch people working out next door through the one-way view window into the gym. Sister Dao cheekily commented that perhaps we should all go work out after we ate. It was a wonderful evening and we headed home full and sleepy, but very happy too. Tomorrow, our team heads to Mui Ne for a weekend of relaxation and fun on the popular sand dunes and warm beaches.

I Say Tom-ay-to; You Say Tom-ah-to...

2010-07-30T06:30:00.003+07:00

Our program is packed with information and serious stuff..but that doesn't mean we haven't had a lot of fun along the way. I don't think we've had a single hour without laughter ringing out from at least one of the classrooms. And, when our different cultures and languages converge, well, it just adds to the comedy of it all.

For example, after our 101 sessions wrapped up during Week 1, I explained to all the participants how the rest of the program was going to unfold. That they would split up into 3 groups each following a different curriculum schedule. I encouraged them to ask questions and engage with our team, telling them to feel free to take one of our interpreters with them to ask questions of any of our professionals. When Anh, the interpreter, translated my words, the teachers all looked a bit shocked and started laughing. I asked Anh what was so funny. She just smiled and told me not to worry about it. I later relegated the event to Thuy, and she explained that there were two things going on. First, students in Vietnam revere their teachers and don't approach them outside of class. The idea of doing that with one of our professionals was beyond them. Secondly, she said that in Vietnamese, one does not "take" a person to do anything...that the word "take" is only used for inanimate objects. They would never dream of "taking" an interpreter with them to ask one of our experts a question - it would be very rude. Rather, they would "ask" or "invite" them. Thuy said that Anh probably used the literal sense of the word instead of choosing a more appropriate Vietnamese term.

In one of the AVE sessions, Maura was trying to use the analogy of a map to explain the concept of tracking progress to reach milestones on the way to an end goal. She asked the class, "If I wanted to get from here to HCMC, how would I do that? What towns would I want to pass through to ensure I was going the right way?"

The teachers puzzled for a bit until one finally stood up and said with a smile on her face, "Actually, it is really easy. You would just go to Mr Lo's house (another classmate) and ask him. He can take you there himself!" Maura laughed and astutely pointed out that this unexpected response was an example of how it takes teamwork to achieve goals, whether it is finding a destination or monitoring the progress of a child.

Later, Hillary was explaining how "scaffolding" works - using a child's knowledge to introduce new concepts and build language. All day, she had been referring to the idea of planting seeds to grow carrots. So, she used that idea again, saying if a child understands how carrots are cultivated, you could expand on that knowledge to talk about how dragonfruit grow. The class shook their heads. No, that would not work. Carrots grow below the ground, while dragonfuit grow above ground - they are not grown the same way, they said.

Hillary responded, "Ok, yes they grow differently, but the idea is that they both grow from seed." Ahhh...but alas...no, said the class. That was incorrect as well. One takes a part of the dragonfruit cacti bark and puts it into the ground to grow a new plant - dragonfruit doesn't grow from seed like carrots do. Huh. Whatdyaknow.

The crash course in Vietnamese agriculture aside, the class finally grasped the larger take-away message that Hillary was trying to impart - that one can use existing knowledge to expand language.

Helen had a similar experience with the Vietnamese tendency towards the literal. She was pretending to be a young child in a demonstration with two participants representing the role of parents. Helen was play-acting with a piece of fake grass and some plastic animals. She had the horse, water buffalo, and cow "eat" the grass. That was all fine, but when she tried to lead the plastic pig to the grass, the "parents" said no and took the grass away from Helen.

"Pigs don't eat grass!" they exclaimed. Helen explained that during play, it is ok for children to have objects act in ways they wouldn't in the real world - that play doesn't have to be correct all the time. Such imagination in play seems to be an unfamilar concept here, one the participants have since come to value and appreciate.

So, it has been really interesting. Its definitely one of the cool things about working across cultures and languages. Different interpretations and viewpoints can be derived from any single word, concept, or action -- affecting how information is disseminated and processed. The good news is the communication flow between our team and the program participants has been wide open, helping to ensure things don't get lost in translation.

Get Ready For This!

2010-07-29T20:11:00.002+07:00

The parents arrived at Thuan An on their motorbikes, some with children in tow, and filed inside the large meeting room, camping themselves behind the small wooden desks. They gathered here tonight to ask questions and get insight from our entire team of professionals who lined up in an informal panel at the front of the room. Flying insects and geckos crashed our party, attracted to the buzzing ceiling lights, and the fans overhead beat the thick humid air.

Our team had prepared some questions to warm up the audience and get the questions flowing, but we needn't have bothered. This was one of the few, if only, opportunities that these parents have had to get informed, straight answers from experts representing a range of speech and hearing disciplines, and they took full advantage of it. The questions rained down on the panel from the get-go, ranging from general inquiries about cochlear implants to specific concerns about their own children.

The learning these parents have acquired after spending three weeks in our program came through in the thoughtful and astute questions they asked. When we first arrived here, all the parents wanted to know was when their child would speak in full sentences. Since then, they have learned that cultivation of language is a process, and about the importance of consistent, quality access to sound in that effort. They have new awareness and appreciation for complete hearing evaluations, properly fitted technology, and the role they can play in their child's language development. The questions posed tonight were remarkable proof that our team has been successful in educating these families. They have knowledge and are now trying to act on it.

At the end of the event, we passed the microphone down the panel line so that each professional could offer one last piece of advice or take-home message. I shared my belief that every one of these children has a talent - sports, arts, science, whatever it may be - and if the parents could identify and help cultivate that talent, it will help their children develop self-confidence and give them an identity that transcends their hearing loss.

Hillary encouraged the parents to work with each other and the teachers to leverage the information and knowledge they have acquired during our program to collectively help their children develop language and enhance the standard of deaf education. When the microphone reached Thuy, she appealed to the parents that -- with their help and support -- they could work together to implement audiological services that would help address some of the gaps in care that these families are now recognizing they need for their children. The audience buzzed in approval. The positive energy and inspiration that lived in that room tonight reminded me of the quote, "Education is not a drop in a bucket, but the start of a fire."

Life is On at Phonak Vietnam

2010-07-26T19:06:00.002+07:00

Phonak has an operations facility in a shiny new industrial park about 2 km from Thuan An Center. The General Director invited us over to visit with them and tour their production process. It was really cool to see the various components that go into different hearing aid models and FM systems and the meticulous standards testing that they all go through. The products made there are distributed throughout SE Asia and Europe. Martha, Jill, and Ali, the audiologists on our team, were in heaven amongst all the technology and it was fun to hear their enthusiastic questions.

I was invited to try on the Phonak OK! model...a low-cost digital hearing aid designed for the developing world that is presently available only in Vietnam. Their R+D team compiled audiograms from 15,000 people with hearing loss and identified the most common profiles. Then, they applied those profiles to four channels on two hearing aids - OK! for mild/moderate losses and OK! Plus for severe/profound. The user selects the channel that sounds the best for them by turning a little dial on the aid, and is able to make minor adjustments to tone and frequency on a different set of dials. The OK! Plus aid can also be made FM compatible. I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the sound - it is a digital aid but has a lot of analog nuances - that loud sharpness that I sometimes miss from my analog hearing aid days! Its a great product and its price point makes it accessible for low-income families in this part of the world.

The 95 participants in our teacher training program will have the opportunity to tour the facility next week and I am looking forward to sharing in the experience with all of them.

Moving the Needle Forward

2010-07-23T23:35:00.005+07:00

I rang the doorbell outside the Binh Thanh School for the Hearing-Impaired and waited on the busy Ho Chi Minh City street for someone to respond. The heavy white iron gate soon slowly creaked open and I was welcomed by a smiling teenage boy. He enthusiastically waved me inside, a restful courtyard of greenery, relative quiet replacing the traffic and chaos of the city. The boy ran off to find Ms. Thi, the director of the school just as Chinh, our friend from the Saigon Children's Charity, pulled her motorbike inside to join us.

The Binh Thanh School is one of the schools participating in our teacher training program. They serve about 100 children who are deaf or hard of hearing, and was the first in HCMC to have an early intervention program. Ms Thi's daughter was identified with hearing loss over 20 years ago, and she wanted to provide her with a good education. She went through the same 3-year training course on deaf education in Amsterdam as Ms Thuy at Thuan An, and opened the school upon completion. Her daughter is now a successful artist whose bright, colorful work graces the walls of the school.. The facility is small but a cheerful, warm ambiance permeates throughout the classrooms and administrative offices that fit tightly fit inside the two-story structure.

As we sat in the conference room with glasses of sweet tea, I shared the foundation's idea for a Mobile Mission concept whereby some of our professionals would travel to some of the 35 schools and centers participating in our teacher training program to provide in-classroom coaching support to the teachers in their home environments. Hearing tests would be offered to children and hearing aids provided to those in need. The objective is to ensure the children have quality access to sound while the teachers get additional training and support in between our annual summer workshops at Thuan An Center.

Ms. Thi's face increasingly brightened and she nodded approvingly as Chinh graciously interpreted my words. She felt the concept would be beneficial, offered ideas of her own in support, and said she would like for her teachers to participate should we bring the concept to fruition. Ms Thi explained that many of her students come from poor families who could benefit from information and awareness about hearing aids and how to care for them, not to mention assistance with the purchase of the hearing aids themselves. Chinh offered to share our concept with a few other school directors she is meeting with as part of a survey the Saigon Children's Charity is conducting to identify and address gaps in resources at deaf schools. It was an encouraging meeting and I look forward to gathering more feedback about how our Mobile Mission program might serve the needs of the Vietnamese deaf education community.

Later this afternoon, I joined up with our team at a large park in District 10 of HCMC where we met Ngoc Trinh and her staff. I first met Ngoc, Dean of the HCMC College Special Education Department, last Fall at the United Nations People to People gathering of speech language pathologists. We instantly hit it off She is the only trained speech pathologist in the country - one of those incredible people with such energy, intense focus, brilliance, and compassion - and is at the forefront of cultivating speech pathology in Vietnam. Ngoc has been graciously supportive of the development of our curriculum, writing a letter of endorsement and providing information to my team about the nuances of the Vietnamese tonal language.

Ngoc and I met for coffee last weekend when she shared the news that her speech therapy center had just opened - the first of its kind in South Vietnam. This is something she has been working towards for a long time, and she excitedly invited us to visit to see the new facility for ourselves. The center provides therapy services to children with a variety of disabilities, including hearing loss and focuses on poor families that don't have easy access to services. The program is staffed by a group of talented volunteers, all graduates from the college and hand-selected by Ngoc to work with her at the clinic. I enjoyed meeting Pham who learned to play the guitar and writes songs to help the children develop speech and overcome impediments. Ngoc heads up the special education department at the college by day and then comes to the clinic every night to work with the children here - puts in 18 hour days, sleeping just 4 a night - but says she wouldn't change a single thing. You rock, Ngoc.

The Color of Life

2010-07-22T22:11:00.007+07:00

Our team and program participants are really starting to bond; laughter and good humor finding equal footing with the training and lecturing that takes place during the daily sessions. It is all well and good but if it is raw humanity that you're looking for, the real life stories behind the academia theory... well, venture upstairs to the small therapy rooms above the main classrooms. Here, the individual family consultations are taking place and this is where you'll experience the human element of our program.

This initiative is akin to watching the Olympic Games in that there is the main event - the training of 95 teachers and 25 families in a structured curriculum - and then there are the vignettes - the family consultations - that add color to it all. They have welcomed us into the private corners of their family lives that they aren't so willing to share with the larger community. After just two weeks of the workshop, we can't help but feel as though we know them personally. Just as we learn about the challenges that athletes go through in their pursuit of the gold, we find ourselves cheering on the families and children who have shared their personal stories with us.

Our team is working through a schedule of over 100 private consultations. Families are driving long distances for a chance to meet with one of our experts for an hour to get insight and advice about how to help their children with hearing loss. There was the mom who traveled 6 hours by boat to meet with our team and the family who drove 4 hours from south-central Vietnam. Some parents drop by without appointments and wait patiently with hope that they can somehow be squeezed into our packed schedule. They ask questions - will their child's hearing ever improve to normal levels? How can they help their child develop better spoken language skills? Are the hearing aids working correctly? Where can they find information about FM systems? Is their child a candidate for cochlear implants? What does the audiogram mean and is it accurate?

The families share their personal stories with us in soft voices and with faces of concern and urgency. A mother tells us about her little girl who was mauled by a dog at 15 months old that left her with hearing loss. Another mother whose family lives and works alongside a busy highway anxiously wonders how to create an optimal listening environment for her daughter in spite of the relentless traffic noise. A father feels guilty that both parents have to work long hours to sustain basic family needs and cannot devote as much time as they would like to their son. A family of a daughter with a cochlear implant, the first to attend Thuan An Center, arrive en masse to spend the day meeting with various members of our team to glean information about why their daughter's language development is delayed and what they can do to help her. An aunt lives deep in the countryside where the only neighborhood kindergarten packs 40 children to a classroom and the teacher has no idea how to work with a child with hearing loss. The aunt will rent a room by Thuan An during the school year so her niece can get the early intervention support she needs.

The stories go on and on.

The team has done a wonderful job answering questions with thoughtful responses and offering advice and ideas in ways that empower the families. It is one thing to listen to a lecture, to watch the teachers practice what they are learning on each other. It is quite another to hear the real life situations. After a few hours of consultations, the importance of our program is crystallized.

Many of these families are participating in our evening family program of lectures and practicum. As that component of our program wrapped up tonight, our lecturers were given a warm round of applause. Several beaming parents stood up with bright smiles to share specific examples about how they have already begun to apply some of the lessons and methods learned in the consultations and lecture program and have seen successful results.

It was really heartwarming to see their gratitude and sense their renewed hope. On the ride back to the hotel, I reflected on how powerful this program is. Our team is making a big difference for these families, many of whom have not received much support or guidance in how to help their children get the language and listening skills they need.

Every bit we can do to train teachers and families, provide these children with access to sound and early intervention support, ensure families have the information they need to help their children reach their full potential..every single bit...is a giant step in the right direction.

Zhu Zhu's take on things…..

2010-07-21T21:43:00.000+07:00

Hi. My name is Sophie. I am five. I came to Vietnam with my mom who is teaching here. My dad came too. Paige asked me to tell you what I think about Vietnam. You want to know what the best thing is? The crocodiles. There are big ones at the DINKY. They sleep in their cages with their mouths open. I think I even heard one snore.

Vietnam is a fun place. The people are nice and there is a lot to do. While my mom teaches at Thuan An, my dad and I spend the day together. My favorite thing to do is go look for ice cream in the town. There is a store with a sign on the front with a lion on it. That is the best place to get ice cream in the entire area. It is not for sale unfortunately.

My dad and I buy a lot of ice cream for my mom and the other Americans on the team. We go to Thuan An every day to meet my mom for lunch. We sit in a big room around a table. I get to use chopsticks and eat rice with soy sauce. It is the best! Then we all eat the ice cream that my dad and I bring. It tastes about the same as the US version but they are more colorful here.

I am really proud of my mom. She has a big job at Listen and Talk in Seattle. I know a lot about cochlear implants because of her. She came to Vietnam to help the teachers get better at teaching deaf and hard of hearing kids. I helped out the first day. There was a little girl at Thuan An. The adults were trying to talk to her but they scared her because they are much taller and bigger. She ran into the hallway to hide. So I followed her and told her not to be scared. I am older than her and bigger too but not as big as the adults. She took my hand and came back out with me where the adults were. After they did their grownup talk, she and I went to play on the swings. It was a lot of fun. I like helping people feel better.

The other neat thing that we did was take a boat in the Mekong. A plastic bag got stuck on the motor and the boat started spinning in all sorts of directions. Ai was our guide. He jumped in the water after taking his shirt off to save the boat. I wasn’t scared. It started to rain very hard and I got to wear a blue poncho!

There are many nuns at Thuan An Center. They are very nice. My favorite is Sister Dao and Sister Mary Anne. We all went out to dinner at a family’s house on Monday. I got to ride in the fancy car with the nuns. We sat in the back and talked all the way there. Sister Mary Anne took me to the Catholic Church. It is right by the school where my mom is teaching. There is a ginormous cross with Jesus on it inside the church. We didn’t go to a church service but that is ok because we have been too busy doing other things. I think God will understand. He takes time off to play golf once in a while.

There is also a big pool at the DINKY. The water is not too cold and not too hot. I go in many times during the day with my dad. My favorite time is when my mom gets back from teaching and we play games in the pool.

We go home in a few days. I had a fun time here. We need to stay longer in Vietnam next time. I think ten weeks would be the perfect amount.

Food for the Soul and Heart

2010-07-19T22:15:00.004+07:00

Our team got a special treat tonight...one of the parents in our program invited us to her home for an amazing multi-course meal. It was quite the party with about 20 guests and 3 generations of family gathered around 3 tables. The food kept rolling out of the kitchen and we could only imagine the time and energy it took to prepare it all. Very generous and very much appreciated by our team. We're going to bed with full bellies!

Week One Done! Cheers All Around!

2010-07-17T06:10:00.010+07:00

With all that has transpired, it is really hard to believe that the program is just one week old. It has been so fun watching our team of lecturers get into the groove over the course of the week, nervous jitters subsiding and creativity and relaxed humor settling firmly in their place.

The quality of the teaching has been exceptional. The teachers and parents are really responding to our team's efforts as proven by their feedback to Thuy. For instance, the Saigon Children’s Charity is conducting a survey and focus group to assess the needs of deaf schools in the HCMC area. Hahn of the HCMC Deaf Association asked to postpone her meeting with the SCC to do this work because she was “too busy with the workshop and didn’t want to miss anything.”

Parents who are engaged in the teacher program are reluctant to leave the classrooms for the individual family consultations. When Thuy pointed out to one parent that “it was just an hour consult”, the parent looked in the course handbook and exclaimed “oh, but that is right during the most important session of all. I can’t miss that.”

One woman came from far away to be here. Her husband misses her (and her cooking...) and wants her to return home. She told him a firm No and that it is important that she be here. You go girl.

The teachers are all passionate to learn – they arrive early, sustain rapt attention through the day. I’ve observed that during the break times, the learning continues as the teachers ask our professionals for more information and follow-up questions about the covered material. I am really grateful to our interpreters for making themselves available during these impromptu question and answer sessions. I owe them a caseload of throat lozenges!

Parents are the same everywhere - whether in Vietnam or otherwise. They want the best for their children and are anxious to learn how to help them. The team is doing a wonderful job explaining language and speech development to parents. The parents aren't all aware that they must be patient..that there are milestones to language development that their child needs to master before they are listening and speaking full sentences. Maura explained it well. Just as no one goes out and successfully races a marathon without going through a training process first, language doesn't happen overnight.

Our team has also been coaching parents about the importance of play and how to use play as opportunities to develop language. Children learn about themselves and the larger world through play. This appears to be a new concept for parents here who seem used to prompting their children in what to say and how to do things "the right way" during play activities.

The parents consistently ask if and when their children will develop spoken language, but there are fundamentals that need to be confirmed first - is the child getting access to sound? Is the hearing aid matching the audiogram? That sort of thing. Speech sounds fall within a certain frequency range - a range that must be heard to develop spoken language.

The fact there are no trained audiologists in Vietnam has created gaps in access to hearing testing, services, hearing technology, information, and awareness. ENT hospitals need more training and expertise about hearing aids. The audiograms we’ve seen don’t always seem to reflect a child’s performance in consultations. The teachers and parents tell us that hearing tests are notorious for inaccuracies and hearing aids are not always properly fitted by distributors and dealers. Regular care and ongoing maintenance checks are rare. We need to ensure these children are getting proper and continued access to sound and support systems, even those who live out in the countryside at great distances from the city centers.

With such a broad swath of South Vietnam represented at our workshop, we are gathering great information that will be useful as the Global Foundation assesses priorities and continues to explore ways to help eradicate some of the challenges.

We celebrated a successful week with a team dinner on the riverfront. Our team is now headed into a weekend of well-deserved fun with plans ranging from a trek to the Mekong Delta, a Vietnamese cooking class, and exploration of Ho Chi Minh City highlights.

Melting Away Discordant Sound

2010-07-16T20:51:00.003+07:00

The power of technology is truly remarkable. FM Listening Systems improve speech understanding in noisy situations. I’ve tried such systems before but today was amazed at just how valuable the technology can be in environments like this.

Teachers talk into a hand-held FM microphone, which transmits the sound of their voice directly to a deaf or hard of hearing child's hearing aid. They enhance the quality of a speaker’s voice while blocking out background noise, relieving some of the stress that comes with having to concentrate so intently to hear.

At Thuan An and other schools, sounds reverberate in classrooms constructed of of tile, cement and other hard surface materials. Combine the poor acoustics with rattling fans overhead and hot days that require the opening of windows and doors , bringing in outside noise and, well, it makes it very hard to follow any conversation or teaching instruction. Especially if you have a hearing loss.

I was upstairs with Sharad at a parent consultation today. The rain was coming down in sheets outside, refreshing the humid air, yet pounding the tin roofs in a cacophonous waterfall. Sharad suggested that we try one of the FM systems he had brought along for our team to use in demonstrations. I put the receiver loop around my neck, adjusted my hearing aids, and waited for Sharad. When he began talking into the microphone from across the dimly lit room, I instantly knew that we have to find a way to get such systems to the children here.

The grating echoes of the voices bouncing against the cement walls and the din of the pouring rain suddenly all melted away. Sharad's voice was crystal clear and sharp, as if he was standing right next to me. My interactions with FM systems in the US were nothing as dramatic as what I experienced in that noisy room today.

We took the system over to the young girl who was in the midst of her consultation and tried it out with her. She didn’t have the cognitive skills just yet to really register the difference in sound quality, but she definitely responded better and more easily to the listening session at hand.

FM systems - and even sound fields - are expensive and require extensive training to maintain. However, the impact of such technology on a child’s ability to overcome hearing loss and learn how to listen and develop language, in my mind, substantially outweigh any hurdles or challenges.

A Perfect Storm on a Hollywood Kind of Day

2010-07-15T23:54:00.003+07:00

Today was busy with a new interpreter on board, videographer on campus for a day-long shoot, a huge parent event, and two visitors from Phonak, one of the world’s largest hearing aid companies.

I was in Thuy’s office with Helen talking about a consultation when Thao, our latest volunteer, stepped inside and brightly introduced herself. Thao is a Viet who is studying speech language pathology at San Jose State in the USA. She learned about the foundation and our program through the Internet and emailed to find out how she could get involved as she was returning home for the summer. At the time, we were searching for interpreters not only fluent in both English and Vietnamese but with fundamentals in speech and hearing sciences so they could effectively understand and interpret the technical terms in our material. Thao has family in both HCMC and in a town near Thuan An, making the commute very doable. Most importantly, she is a wonderful person with a positive ambiance. I am pleased that we can repay her graciousness in part by giving her an opportunity to interact with our team’s four seasoned speech language pathologists and learn from their teaching. It was just the perfect match all around and I’m really looking forward to having her with us this next month.

Sharad, Product and Audiology Manager for Phonak Singapore arrived later in the day with Tuan, the Marketing Manager for Phonak Vietnam. Thuy and I gave them a tour of the program in action before setting down with them in her office to talk for a few hours. The hearing aid market in SE Asia is immature and there are serious gaps in access and distribution. There are presently no audiologists, leaving it to doctors at ENT hospitals to diagnose and treat hearing loss. This has posed challenges for information dissemination with schools and families, follow-up care and testing of hearing, and ongoing maintenance of hearing aids. Tuan offered to arrange a factory tour for our workshop participants, something I am sure they will look forward to in the last week of the workshop.

For tonight's family program, parents were encouraged to bring their children with them to engage in two hours of interactive coaching with our team. We initially expected about 12-15 families, but over 25 turned out in spite of a big storm - and many teachers showed up to observe as well -creating quite a circus. Our team scrambled though in their typical good-natured way and did their best to coach families in three different rooms about various approaches in spite of limited resources and interpreters. We'll need to make some adjustments to next week's version of this interactive evening, but the families did leave at the end of the night smiling and chattering away with each other about the tips they learned.

Vincent, our videographer, arrived on his yellow Vespa motorbike from HCMC, camera gear in tow. A few months ago, I was looking for someone who could produce a video about our work in Vietnam but didn’t have much budget to attribute. Just when I thought my efforts would be futile, a Vietnamese contact introduced me to our new friend. Vincent is an American expat with extensive experience stemming from his days working at creative agencies in New York and San Francisco. I shared our mission and work with him through email and something must have resonated as he agreed to take our project on. We met for the first time last week and instantly hit it off, sharing travel stories and similar personal philosophies on work/life balance and the importance of giving back to society in a meaningful way.

Vincent came to the welcome ceremony this past Monday and was kind enough to capture the moments of the special day with my personal camcorder as well as his more professional camera. He was at Thuan An all day today shooting footage. He dodged the rain and lightening to capture the various activities within our teacher program, consultations, parent program, and conducted interviews of teachers, families, and Vietnamese and American professionals. The day ran long. We were still doing interviews at 10 pm tonight when Vincent offered to come back tomorrow so I could do my own interview with renewed energy. I so appreciate the gesture for the chance to sleep away a bit of the dark circles that I am sure sit under my eyes.

It was a crazy, nonstop day...but such a great one. I came back to the DINKY tonight inspired and so amped up and excited about everything we're doing!

Narrowing the Focus

2010-07-14T22:15:00.000+07:00

A three year old girl wearing hearing aids and pigtails has been joining her mom at our parent program. We learned that the family lives about an hour away by motorbike but they’ve been making the trek each evening to participate. Tonight, Judy involved them in the teaching. Using a plastic container of blocks, she showed the mom how she can use play and everyday interactions to encourage language development. Judy’s wonderfully descriptive face and warm nature combined with her knowledge and ability to present information clearly made it a lot of fun to watch her interactions with this little girl. She got both mom and daughter laughing and engaged throughout the demonstration and Judy’s coaching efforts. It was magical stuff.

This morning, the participants in our teacher program were divided into three smaller groups of about 30-35 people based on their experience and backgrounds. They’ll remain in these groups now for the duration of the workshop, rotating through speech language pathology, early intervention, auditory verbal education and audiology course work.

Meanwhile, upstairs, daily private consultations that will be conducted throughout the month got underway. Members of our team are meeting with individual families to answer questions and give advice specific to their child’s hearing loss. There are a lot of moving parts to this program and its really cool to see it all roll like a well-oiled machine.

The audiology team really got creative today. Martha and Jill brought along hearing testing equipment and the teachers were thrilled to be able to interact with it all. They tested each other - good news, they all checked out with normal hearing – and practiced Ling sound checks. They were laughing and having a blast.

Let's Roll!

2010-07-12T23:05:00.005+07:00

Thuy, looking graceful in her Ao Dai arrived at the DINKY bright and early to take us to Thuan An Center for the welcome ceremony. Members from the American consulate were gathered along with representatives from the government, university, other NGOs, and media. It was great to have Chinh from the Saigon Children’s Charity share in our special day as well.

After warm introductions and banter, we headed to the reception room for the festivities. The yellow French colonial building was bright and cheery with teak wooden desks lined in three long rows and shiny, clean floors.

Above the stage, a large banner hung on the wall, proudly announcing our workshop and our supporters. Thuan An’s Operation Director kicked things off with an introductory speech before Thuy took the stand to share the story about how she and I met, bringing back a lot of wonderful memories. She explained how my time at Thuan An Center inspired me to start this foundation and how we are working together to help children with hearing loss all across Vietnam get the education and resources they need for successful lives.

I followed her tough act with my own speech in which I introduced the team. I’m so thrilled to have all of them here – it’s a great group of talented, passionate professionals with wonderful, positive attitudes. I really can’t say enough about them. Kit from the American consulate wrapped up the event with an inspiring diatribe about how our countries can work together to create positive change. The excitement and energy was palpable. The day bright in every sense of the word.

We gathered for lunch in the adjoining room. Vietnamese and Americans interacted over traditional dishes and bottles of Saigon beer. My table was filled with representatives from the American consulate and local NGOs and we spent the hour talking about possibilities and ideas for how we can help others.

After lunch, we started up the program with all 95 participants gathered in one room. The first two days’ schedule covers what we call Speech and Hearing 101. Our team took turns providing a general overview of the four areas of our workshop - audiology, speech pathology, early intervention, and auditory verbal education.

I sat up at the front manning the projector and it was really fun to look out on the sea of rapt Vietnamese teachers, soaking up the words of wisdom. The teachers have come from 34 schools as far away as Hue (1,300 km) to attend this program. Later, I got an email from Chinh about wanting to speak with Hanh of the Ho Chi Minh Deaf Association about a focus group survey that she is conducting. Chinh shared that Hanh asked to postpone the meeting because she was too busy enjoying our workshop. That was a nice endorsement for sure!

The program for parents kicked off in the evening. About 28 parents gathered in the warm classroom after their workday to learn the fundamentals of audiology. We passed around a consultations sign-up sheet and within minutes, the entire schedule was filled. Some parents signed up for multiple 1-hour sessions, but we have over 100 requests for individual meetings over the course of the next four weeks.

I had high expectations for this day but boy, I really don’t know how it could have gone off any better than it did.

The Moments You Never Forget

2010-07-11T22:26:00.003+07:00

The team has arrived! It has been a lot of fun having everyone here and being able to speak in English as fast as I want to again.

Half the group came in on Friday to explore and acclimate in advance of the start of our program…a day spent in Ho Chi Minh and another out at the Cao Dai temple and Cu Chi tunnels in a contrast of the best and worst of humanity. Our hired driver took a few wrong turns. He’d hop out of the van and run over to roadside vendors to meekly ask for directions. His body language would brighten as he’d get the answers he was looking for complete with hand and arm gestures pointing the way. He’d hustle back and full of optimism and purpose, yank the van into gear. Away we’d go again only to find ourselves down another wrong path. The entertaining saga would repeat, giving us impromptu opportunities to see rural towns and villages that we might have not otherwise.

The rest of the crew came in later in the weekend and we convened Sunday at our DINKY riverboat respite for some rejuvenating pho, stir fries, and fresh fruits. After a quick team meeting, we headed to Thuan An Center.

There are moments in life that you just don’t ever forget - those logjams of memory that stay with us for all time. One of the deaf staffers met our taxis at the school gate. She grasped my hand so firmly, racing me to the back of the campus that all I could do was hope that the rest of the team was close behind. Dao came out of a building and warmly welcomed us all before escorting us into a classroom where all 95 workshop participants were engaged in our pre-workshop assessment test. The participants gave us a standing ovation as we entered. It was such a poignant moment.

I introduced our team to the group and then Thuy took everyone around to show them the lay of the land. The construction crew finished the work and the building looks great. We have two rooms for our own use and they even thought to install air conditioning at the last minute for us. It was funny…they couldn’t find the on/off remote for the AC, but at least we do have it! Dao and Thuy were both so excited and gracious. It was a completely humbling and warm experience and I couldn’t stop grinning.

When we left, Maura and Kim opted to get their first Vietnamese motorbike ride back to the DINKY. They had a blast and were talking all about it at dinner. It has been fun as everyone here has a story or experience to share from their days. As for my own...walking into that room today filled with the teachers and sharing that with the team …well, it was just amazing. We totally did it. This program is going to make a real impact. Wow.

A Look Behind the Scenes

2010-07-08T23:20:00.000+07:00

The scurry of activity has escalated around Thuan An with the starting date of the teacher training program now just days away. Thuy and I took a tour of the facility today and it was like being in the midst of an army of ants with an impending storm brewing. The school suffered a water main break several months ago and the hired construction crew has been working furiously to finish the repairs. Hammers, nails, dust, and boards scatter around the lower level of the yellow French colonial building. Meanwhile, the cleaning staff has been hard at work in the heat and humidity freshening up the sleeping ward where the Vietnamese participants will board four to a room for the next month. The grounds crew has been sprucing up the drives while the cooks have been placing orders and stocking up on food. The kitchen will be manned by six cooks over the course of the program, serving lunch and dinner to over 120 people on a regular basis.

The past few days, Thuy, two of her staff, and I have been finalizing the nuances for the program. While its been a lot of work and hours, we’ve definitely had fun along the way. Today, we took a break for lunch and ended up kicking back for about an hour talking about last night’s World Cup game. I was schooled on how to use chop sticks the RIGHT way. Seems my hand has been too close to the pick-up-food area end of the sticks this whole time…

Thuy and her team finalized the translations of the massive handbooks that will be distributed to all the participants. There are two – one for the parent program and one for the teacher program. Yesterday, the Thuan An printer was put to work cranking out one copy of each – a total of about 600 pages (!!) Then, they motorbiked for an hour each way into HCMC to a copy shop where they are now being copied and bound. The picture here is a shot of them en route with the last load - the parent program. It was great to get that big job done, for sure!

Our program kicks off on Monday at 9 am local time with a welcome ceremony at Thuan An Center. Media members, NGO counterparts, government officials, university representatives, and even members of the American consulate are scheduled to attend along with over 120 workshop participants. We are all looking forward to seeing a year’s worth of hard work and planning come to life. After the pomp and circumstance, the program begins in the afternoon when the 95 teachers settle in with their handbooks to begin the curriculum that our team has developed over the past year. The evening program for families starts later that night with an audiology presentation.

Tomorrow morning, I head to the airport to pick up the foundation’s team. This past week has been mere prologue to the real show. Let the games begin!

The Ripple Effect of a Powerful Idea

2010-07-06T03:10:00.003+07:00

Last night, I got my first glimpse into how impactful our program will be. Several families dropped by Thuan An to learn more about the parent component of our workshop and sign up for consultations with our experts. They arrived with their children - some shy with their big brown eyes and sweet faces burrowed in their moms' embraces while others more rambunctious grinned broadly at me and Thuy before running off to play - and all of them were adorable.

One father of a 3-year-old daughter asked to participate in both the teacher and parent program to maximize his learning. That means he will be at the center every day between July 12 and August 6, from 7:30 am - 9:00 pm. He sat with me to share his concern for his daughter's development. It may have been a diatribe in halting English, but the sense of urgency and compassion were clear. He asked me many questions about my own experiences and kept saying how grateful he was that our team was coming. A mother signed up for an hour of consultations each day before the parent program begins in the evening.

All the parents sat around the table, faces hopeful and intent as Thuy ran through the details. It was an incredible display of the desire to learn and help their children. Sitting there, watching them all interact with Thuy, asking questions and the like...well, I couldn't help but be moved. This is what it is all about. Helping others make their own worlds a little easier and better.

Minh, one of our volunteer interpreters dropped by en route home from work to welcome me. I first met Minh at a UN People to People event last Fall. I was taken by his impeccable English and concentrated effort to do the very best he could in translating what was complicated material at the meeting. I later introduced myself to him and we got to talking about the foundation's project. "Give me a call when you are ready," he said intensely. "I want to help." I kept his card and when we were looking for interpreters, he was one of the first I emailed. I'm so glad to have him with us.

Thuy shared with me today, the speech that she will give at the media day ceremony. In it, she talks about how we met and it was really touching to hear her version of the story. She says our time together gave her renewed confidence and inspiration to help young children with hearing loss learn to communicate through spoken language, get good education, and achieve all they hope to in their lives. My experience here in 2008 was such a monumental one for me personally...so it is warming to learn that the feeling appears to have been mutual.

Ode to the DINKY!

2010-07-05T14:57:00.004+07:00

Our home away from home for the next month is the DINKY - which is nothing but, by the way...located about 20 km outside of Ho Chi Minh City and a 2 mile walk to the Thuan An Center. Its definitely a respite from the gritty grime and noise of the relentless traffic that runs the highway. To get there, one can opt for the well traveled road or walk along the red dirt path by the river laden with lily pads and wooden boats filled with rice and fishermen.

The hotel is a carnival in and of itself. No use for narcissism here. The rooms are clean and freshly painted in a cheery yellow and teak bridges lead you out to the wonderful river, but that is where normalcy ends. En route to the restaurant and check-in area, you walk through a jungle paradise of greenery with cages of alligators and hairy tarantulas, aquariums filled with exotic fish, sea snails the size of baseballs, and bright red lobster. You can even feed the fish if you choose...sort of a morbid last meal before they hit the frying pan in the evening's dinner, I suppose. There's another "wing" to the hotel - a real houseboat where guests can opt to stay. The boat does leave the dock every day for three hours for a river cruise. Imagine forgetting your wallet and going back to find your room is out on the river! Across the way is a pseudo pond with a little wooden bridge where Tom Sawyer wanna-bes can try their luck at catching catfish and a watermill that cascades buckets of water into a holding pond.

My favorite place in this crazy convergence of nature, animals, and human existence is the open air restaurant. I'm sitting there now in fact. The breezes off the river are delightful and I love how the whole restaurant rocks when a big boat goes by. Hang on to your pho! Its a great spot to read, write, or just reflect. Large lily pads quickly float pass with the current, creating the illusion that we are the ones rolling down the big river.

I wish you could see this spectacle - there's a teak fishing boat drifting right along with a couple of shirtless men precariously balanced on the edges, looking out for fish. Its quite the scene with big storm clouds brewing in the background and a light breeze sweeping away some of the heat and humidity. Its so calm and peaceful here...a great way to chill in the proverbial and literal quiet of the storm of our workshop getting underway soon.

Making Connections

2010-07-04T23:30:00.001+07:00

I took a taxi into HCMC this morning for what turned out to be a truly inspiring day with Chinh from the Saigon Children's Charity and Trinh from the Mekong Anh Duong Association. I met both of these women a few months ago when they came out to Seattle as part of a Vietnam embassy-sponsored trip. We immediately hit it off and made plans to meet up here. Its funny - when I met Chinh in the lobby of the hotel in Seattle, she looked so tiny in contrast with all the Americans in our midst...and yet, when I met her today amongst the Vietnamese, she looked exactly the right size. So, I must be like a total giant here!

Anyway, the SCC raises money and distributes resources and training to schools and programs that serve underprivileged and disabled children in HCMC. They are working on a project to provide HCMC's deaf schools with the resources they need -- including FM systems in classrooms, more computers, audiology equipment, Internet capabilities, as well as teacher training. They have asked for the Global Foundation's involvement with a survey they are developing to identify and close resource gaps with the idea there may be opportunities for us to collaborate down the road. If computers and Internet became more widely available, it would go a long way towards distance learning and tele-intervention efforts. It would be wonderful to have easy, ongoing connection and mentorship between our professionals and the teachers in Vietnam.

Chinh will be at our media day event on July 12, and I look forward to introducing her to our team. Trinh heads up inclusive education efforts in the Mekong and will be at our program on the 20th as a guest.

It was a very fun visit...Chinh took us to a couple of the SCC projects, including a vocational school where they help kids falling through the cracks get the education support they need. We also visited a school for disabled kids -- it was heart-wrenching to see children with cleft pallet, others in rickety old wheelchairs, and several with deformed limbs. Yet, the director there is just great and does a lot with minimal resources. The place is a bit run down, but there was such a positive vibe. It really gave me pause on this July 4th to think how lucky we are in the US.

We wrapped up with a lunch of pho and spring rolls at this authentic Vietnamese restaurant. We had such fun talking about non-work things and started to giggle and bond over girl talk and the like. It was a very cool, authentic time, for sure. They are both wonderful people with such mindfulness about doing good. The world needs more people like those two.

And How Was Your Day?

2010-07-03T18:12:00.015+07:00

I arrived in Vietnam full of anticipation. As we snaked our way from the airport through Ho Chi Minh City and out to the countryside of Binh Duong province, I just had to slide open the windows of the van despite the sweltering temperature. I needed to soak up the familiar place.

I love this part of the world for being so different from the West and for all it offers to the senses. Family and friends gather along the sidewalks in make-shift congregation areas of plastic chairs and tables to laugh and share tales; tantalizing scents waft from woks and stalls in the markets; honking horns compete with urgent shouts of vendors in silks and conical hats. Mopeds and bicycles hug the road's shoulders with faceless drivers swathed in scarves and bandanas to keep the dust out. As we headed down Highway 13, the chaos of HCMC slowly dissipated; rivers and farmland replacing concrete jungle as we sped along.

We entered Lai Thieu, home to the Thuan An Center, where our workshop will begin on July 12. It never fails to give me a surge of happiness each time I visit the familiar village. Lai Thieu thrives on its highway location, offering a convenient rest stop for travelers as they pass by. Storefronts offering everything from jeans and footwear to bottles of La Vie water and Asian snacks lean against tin roofed restaurants serving pho and coffee. Laundry strings from the balconies of tall, skinny apartment buildings reflecting the bright sunlight. Further afield, men navigate wooden boats through a meandering river with long poles as they search for fish and crawdads. The streets are gritty and the dust constant. The village may not be much to look at, yet there is a strong sense of community that resonates here. Lai Thieu is real, unpretentious, rural Vietnam.

After checking into the hotel, I headed over to Thuan An Center to visit with Thuy, the director of the program. When I entered the familiar grounds, the friendly ambiance immediately washed over me. Thuy was in front of her office waiting with a big hug and a broad smile before bustling me inside. We sat in her cheerful office decorated with flowers and the little touches of a woman's hand. She has a large whiteboard calendar on the wall that marks the highlights of her week's schedule in careful, neat script. It warmed me to see she had noted our meeting.

Thuy and I settled in to pick up our conversation as if we had just seen each other yesterday. If there is anything I am most proud of with this whole initiative, it is the friendships I've made along the way with wonderful people across the globe. Thuy is one of the names at the top of the list.

Sister Dao, Thuan An's Education Director, dropped by to say hello. A member of the Sisters of Charity, Dao is someone straight out of the Sound of Music. I honestly would not be surprised if she suddenly broke out into song. Dao has a calm presence and sense of purpose about her and yet there is a light-hearted streak right below the surface, a mischief that makes her a lot of fun to be around.

As Thuy and I were getting caught up, a knock came at the door. The door pushed open and a tiny little girl dressed in yellow with big brown eyes and dark bangs shyly said hello to Thuy. I love watching Thuy interact with children. She has such grace, a compassionate nature that draws everyone to her, particularly the children. They all love her. I still recall past meetings when she would ruefully let her youngest students join us in our enjoyment of a bowl of mango or grapes as we continued our dialogue.

Ahn, our latest young visitor, has a cochlear implant - the first of Thuan An's students to get one. Cochlear implants are expensive, and hence, still pretty rare in Vietnam. Her family lives far away but they come to the center so that Ahn can get the early intervention services she needs to develop listening and spoken language skills. It was a wonderful half hour to talk with the family and learn all the details about this little girl. They will be back for our program and I am looking forward to having our team of professionals meet her.

We now have 95 teachers participating in this summer's program. There are even more that would like to attend, but Thuy finally drew the line. Thuy's eyes grew big as she told me about the people who are coming from the various schools and early intervention centers. She is nearly 50 years old but has such youthful exuberance and passion for her vocation that makes it enjoyable to work with her.

We have some last minute things to wrap up before the program starts. I'm looking forward to collaborating with Thuy and her staff to get it all squared away. It is quite an effort to frame up a project of this scale with thousands of miles between us and through email and across language and cultural barriers. Being in the same room, scheming about the program we've been working on over the past year and talking about the possibilities to come...well, it really doesn't get much better than this.

We're On Our Way!

2010-06-29T02:41:00.012+07:00

Thank you for checking in with us!

Our team is somewhere over the Pacific en route to Vietnam...its a big planet, so please bear with us as we make our way. Our director is scheduled to arrive on July 2 and the rest of the group to follow beginning July 9.

Meanwhile, we hope you enjoy reading through our posts from the foundation's visit to Vietnam last Fall. They provide a bit of history and set the stage for our team's adventures ahead. Think of it as a prelude to the amazing performance that is about to start!

Thank you for your support...and we'll see you very soon.

The Why Factor

2009-10-20T08:18:00.014+07:00

I have been asked various "Why" questions by friends and acquaintances curious about the Global Foundation's work. For our final blog entry, I thought it might be useful to sum up the answers to what I am calling "The Why Factor"....

- Why a teacher training program? When Thuy and I assessed potential projects to help children with hearing loss in Vietnam,we agreed that a teacher training program offered the greatest potential reward. We will bring about 10 experts to Thuan An to mentor 85 teachers of the deaf from 35 schools throughout South Vietnam. Since one teacher of the deaf works with 10 children, a single workshop has the potential to directly impact the education of 850 children. Furthermore, the teachers who attend the workshop will share their learning with other teachers, making the benefits exponential.

- Why Vietnam? The government recently started providing resources to support special education services. In a culture that puts great value on education, the teachers have asked for more training to secure the additional expertise they need to help these children develop listening and spoken language skills. Thuan An is a recognized leader in deaf education in Vietnam and conducted training in the past before funding provided by another NGO expired.The foundation hopes to eventually expand its model of partnership to other countries that need deaf education teacher training.

- Why oral deaf education? The foundation supports all modalities of communication for children with hearing loss. The most important thing is that the child has a language at all - whether through signs, the spoken word, or some combination of the two. Our first workshop will focus on oral deaf education (communicating through spoken language) because teachers in Vietnam only have a basic understanding of how to implement such practices. The teachers have asked for more expertise in the areas of audiology, speech language pathology, auditory verbal education, and early intervention. They recognize that with such knowledge, they can help children with hearing loss integrate more successfully into mainstream hearing society.

- Why the focus on infants and children 0-6? A child’s potential for language acquisition is established in the first six years of life. For children with hearing loss, this is a crucial window of time. With access to appropriate technology and expertise, they can develop spoken language and listening skills. For this reason, our first workshop will concentrate on empowering teachers and families to work with this age group.

- Why should the Global Foundation do this? The Global Foundation has a stellar team of experts representing fields of audiology, speech therapy, auditory verbal education, and early intervention. In collaboration with Thuan An Center, our core team has developed a program that will benefit 80 teachers and has the endorsement of Ho Chi Minh City University. This is an investment in human potential -we teach the teachers and they will eventually be able to teach themselves.

- Why is this project important? Unlike other disabilities, hearing loss can be overcome. With the right framework of technology, teachers, and family awareness, children with hearing loss can assimilate into regular society alongside their hearing peers. This equates to better education opportunities, improved job prospects, and overall improved quality of life - not to mention monetary savings to society that no longer have to provide disability support. Our project will facilitate the knowledge transfer needed to benefit thousands of children with hearing loss in Vietnam.

On a personal note, I benefited from early intervention and expert teachers to lead a successful life in mainstream hearing society. I have since seen the amazing advancements in technology and deaf education and believe that children with hearing loss should be afforded access to such resources no matter where in the world they live.

My time in Vietnam has grown small. I'm heading to Cambodia to revisit the wonderful temples at Angkor before meeting with the directors of the All Ears Cambodia clinic and the Deaf Development Programme. Then it is on to Thailand before heading home to the USA at the end of October.

Thank You for following this blog. It is always an honor and privilege when our supporters take time out of their busy days to read about what we are doing. I am sincerely grateful for your interest and support. As always, please feel free to contact me through the foundation website. For more travel stories, please visit http://www.paigestringer.com/published.shtml

Teach a (Wo)man to Fish...

2009-10-17T21:08:00.006+07:00

Many of the deaf education leaders I have met on this trip - which ironically all happen to be women - took advantage of opportunities for advanced training to not only increase their own knowledge, but to “pay it forward” in significant ways. Thuy, Thiep, Ha are three such examples. They each have used their leadership positions to pass along knowledge acquired through privileged training opportunities. They are now leading the way for a whole generation of teachers, and helping to elevate the quality of deaf education in their country in the process.

Thuy, Thiep, and Ha all started their careers as untrained teachers of the deaf, improving on their craft over time simply by learning from their peers and through trial and error. They were among 13 talented teachers selected to attend a 4-year deaf education training program in Amsterdam in the 1990s - and engaged in a 6-month crash course in advance to learn English so they could take part in the experience. During the Amsterdam program, they learned for the first time about early intervention, auditory-verbal education, and how children with hearing loss CAN learn to listen and talk when provided with the right resources at an early age.

Thiep came home to co-found the Special Education department at Hanoi University. There were no early intervention centers, hearing tests at hospitals, or trained teachers of the deaf when she joined the university team. She has since become a major player in getting these things established in and around the city and has trained several teachers – some of whom now head up various programs for hearing-impaired children throughout North Vietnam – including Ms. Lien, the headmistress at the Thai Nguyen school (see blog entry "Making Connections in the North").

When Thuy was promoted to Director at Thuan An, she implemented early intervention and auditory-verbal education at the Center. She continues to mentor teachers throughout South Vietnam about these practices and provides training sessions to the undergraduates at Ho Chi Minh City University.

Ha assumed leadership of the Early Intervention Center in Ho Chi Minh City. With Ha’s guidance, the center’s early intervention programs are among the most successful in the country. She mentors teachers from regular schools throughout Ho Chi Minh City about how to work with special needs children.

In my opinion, the Western response to training is much more passive than what I have witnessed in Vietnam. I shared my thoughts with a colleague of mine who is expert on cultural psychology. She said that in the West, we tend to absorb what we learn, and consider it a well of wealth from which we can draw upon as needed. In our developed world, we have access to a great deal of information, education, and a variety of perspectives, and yet change occurs slowly - if at all - because we don't have a sense of urgency that change is needed. Where need is great and resources are scarce - as in Vietnam - the value of education and training is much higher, as is the urgency to use resources in targeted, active ways.

The Vietnamese culture greatly values education. The teachers and professionals here are hungry for knowledge transfer from international experts in deaf education. Our workshop is a particularly good investment because the participants are likely to proactively utilize the knowledge they gain and disseminate what they learn amongst each other. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once reflected, "It is one of the most beautiful compensations in life...No man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself."

Ha, Thuy, and Thiep have accomplished great things to advance deaf education in Vietnam. However, all three have expressed to me that there is so much more that needs to be done. There are many teachers without formal training, and those who do have undergraduate degrees in special education have only a general knowledge of deaf education-specific teaching methods.

They stressed that our workshop – particularly if it could be expanded to a three year initiative – would have a lasting impact. By providing tools in the form of experts, our program can serve as a catalyst for significant improvement to the quality of deaf education in their country. The futures of thousands of hearing-impaired children would become much brighter, and society as a whole would benefit as a result.

Bonding Over Mangos & MOUs

2009-10-16T00:00:00.006+07:00

Thuy, the Director of Thuan An, and I have been working through the long list of details that need to be ironed out for the teacher training workshop next summer. With 85 teachers, 15 experts, 8 interpreters anticipated to travel to Thuan An for the one-month event, there's a lot to nail down - everything from scouting hotels to confirming the curriculum to solidifying our budget. Along the way, we’ve met with countless government officials, academic heads, merchants, banking representatives, and others. There’s nothing like a shared goal to bring two people together, and while we were fast friends to start, we certainly have cemented our bond these past several weeks.

I imagine we’re quite the pair to onlookers as we bustle down streets or head into meetings. She, with her tiny frame and smooth olive skin a contrast to my much taller, fairer self, taking two strides for my every one, answering yet another of my inquisitive questions in animated English before switching seamlessly to a warm Vietnamese lingo as we meet our counterparts . Thuy’s full name means Fresh Autumn Water. I cannot think of a more perfect moniker for this sweet, happy woman with a big heart and a deep, old soul.

Perhaps the most time consuming element in all of this was securing a permit for the Global Foundation to work in Vietnam next summer. Not only are there many documents to create for the Vietnamese government officials, but the key ones had to be submitted in both Vietnamese and English. Given our two languages do not translate into the other very well, it takes effort to carefully choose the right words to convey a thought. This is where Thuy’s sense of humor and positive attitude has been priceless - not to mention her attention to detail and high standard for her work. She burned a lot of late night oil translating my documents last week while I was up in Hanoi. We could have hired the work out, but she insisted on doing it herself. She very much wants the Global Foundation and our workshop to be here next summer.

Thuy has excellent English comprehension, but there were complicated elements – legal language and the like - that we had to review together before she could effectively translate. She and I would sit for hours in her cheery office, with a bowl of mango, watermelon, or some other luscious fruit to give us stamina as we went through my drafts line for line. She would ask me the meaning of a word or a phrase, and I would try to explain a concept in a different way or choose a similar word to make it clearer. Sometimes she’d scrunch her face, ponder my alternative meaning, shake her head, and say "ohhhh, I need another piece!" She'd chuckle, take a slice of fruit from the bowl with a toothpick before diving back into the document at hand. I was constantly impressed with her ability to synthesize this information in a second language. She's a smart cookie.

After the translations were complete, she circulated them around to the other leaders of Thuan An for their feedback. I learned that in Vietnam, everything in the work environment is done by committee. No official document is sent or decision made without the approval of the full group. Adjustments and clarifications were made. Reams of paper were discarded while new copies were printed out. When we finally finished, I commented that we must have burned down a forest of trees. Thuy had not heard this American analogy before and laughed ruefully as she agreed. Later, we were using these discarded drafts as scrap paper to write notes during a conversation. I recalled Mr. Pham’s comments from last weekend (see Art of Silence blog entry) and shared them with Thuy. “See, Thuy?” I said. There is bad with the good! We used up a lot of paper in getting those permit translations absolutely perfect…but now we have plenty of scrap paper to use!”

Spotlight on Thuy

2009-10-15T00:19:00.003+07:00

I hope you enjoy this video interview that is now posted on the Global Foundation's website. In it, Thuy, the Director of Thuan An, explains why this teacher training program that our organizations are working to implement is so important to the future of deaf education in South Vietnam. http://www.childrenwithhearingloss.org/projects.shtml

The Art of Silence

2009-10-11T18:39:00.005+07:00

It seemed fitting that on the 999th anniversary of Hanoi’s liberation from invading armies, I paid a visit to an old soldier. Viet Hong Lam Pham traded his gun for a paintbrush almost 40 years ago after being deafened during an American bombing raid during the Vietnam War, and is now an accomplished artist. I read his story in a Vietnamese newspaper and was impressed by his current efforts to mentor young artists. I decided to contact him, and after a brief email exchange, he invited me for a visit to his home/studio.

My interpreter and I arrived in his neighborhood, a maze of winding streets on the edge of Hanoi so narrow that only foot and motorbike traffic can get through here. We walked along, stopping frequently to ask directions. Everyone seemed to know just where he lived - old men, young women, boys, and girls all broke into smiles and instantly pointed the way as if we were following the yellow brick road to the wonderful wizard of Oz.

We finally stopped in front of a large gate and rang the bell. A young girl greeted us and we were escorted through a peaceful garden of plants, trees, and small waterways to a large 3-story home of dark wood and stone. Mr. Pham met us at the door and welcomed us inside with a sweep of his hand - a bit formal of a gesture but I took an instant liking to this man with a kind countenance. We followed him into an airy and bright dining room with open doors that looked out onto the garden and courtyard. The inviting ambiance and calming effects of the feng shui design made me feel instantly at home.

Mr. Pham poured us some tea and settled in to answer my questions. He joined the communist army when he turned 18, engaged in the wars of his country during the 1960s and early 1970s, and suffered two serious injuries before the blast that deafened him took him of commission for good at 28. Devastated by the loss of his hearing, he struggled to find the will to live, attempting suicide three times, until his artist father encouraged him to pursue this therapeutic vocation. Mr Pham went to art school where he met his future wife. "It worked out, you see. I met my partner. It was then that I started to realize that for everything bad in life, there is good to be found," he explained. "You wait and you will see what it is."

If 10 years of fighting wars during his formative years once hardened him, there was no indication of any of that now. In a process of healing, Mr. Pham tried to focus on the good things in life until the practice became as second nature as his adopted Buddhist faith. His paintings reflect memory snapshots of his military travels throughout Vietnam, but he only uses cheerful colors to convey them. "My father painted with dark colors but I only use the bright ones," he said. "There is so much light in life. It makes my heart happy to focus on the good instead of the bad things."

I learned that he can hear a little bit in one ear through the use of a hearing aid, but relies on lip-reading to understand what is being said. "I cannot hear well anymore since the bomb, but when I remove my hearing aid, I can concentrate better on my art. So you see? Again, there is good with the bad." I nodded and explained that I frequently take my hearing aids off when I write - the absolute silence can be conductive to creative work. He smiled at me, "Yes, see you understand. We share that. You and I."

Mr Pham invited me to his studio to view samples of his work. "I used to live in the Old Quarter, but then had to move to a bigger house." He gestured at the paintings around him and laughed, " Not enough room for all my art and my father's art!" The work was truly creative - bright colors of water color and gauche paint splashed across rice papers in abstract designs and portraits of landscapes and people.

He mentors young artists now, including blind children. He explained that he teaches them the concept of hot and cold palettes by running cold water over their hands or hovering their hands over a flame, depending on the color being introduced. "The pictures of the blind children are the very best because they paint from the imagination. I do not have to teach them how to paint with feeling."

He complemented the Global Foundation for the work we are doing. "it is important for both you and for others, to help the less fortunate turn bad situations into better ones." He offered to introduce me via email to his circle of artist friends who may be able to lend suport. A kind and unanticipated gesture of friendship.

Our conversation complete, Mr. Pham escorted us out into the serene garden. He extended his hand to take mine and then leaned in to touch each of my cheeks to his own. His eyes crinkled into a warm smile and he paused before nodding his goodbye. No words needed to be said.

Thousands of miles away, there hangs a plaque above the players’ entrance to Center Court at Wimbledon that reads “if you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same, yours is the world and all that is in it.”

Making Connections in the North

2009-10-09T00:48:00.006+07:00

Our friends at the NGO Caritas graciously set up a meeting for me at a school for disabled children in a province about 2.5 hours away from Hanoi. The Vice-Dean of Special Education at Hanoi University, joined me on the trip. To have 5 hours round-trip in a car with an expert in Vietnamese deaf education and also speaks excellent English was priceless. She received her training in the same international course as Thuy from Thuan An and is a strong advocate of auditory-verbal education and for integrating these kids into mainstream schools.

She was enthusiastic about the teacher training program that the Global Foundation intends to implement, particularly Early Intervention where she sees the most opportunity to help children with hearing loss acquire spoken language. She suggested that we expand our program to include North Vietnam. She said there is a need in the Hanoi area for more early intervention and auditory-verbal expertise. There are still many people unconvinced that hearing impaired children can learn to speak and hear. Our teacher training program could help bolster her case, she said. Budget constrauts will limit our program to the South to start, but I told her we could certainly expand it to include other parts of Vietnam with the appropriate funding.

There are over 4000 disabled children in this province – the high number due to industrial contamination in the area. The Thai Nguyen school for the disabled educates about 300 deaf, blind, and mentally challenged kids. It is considered one of the best schools for disabled children in North Vietnam and its deaf program is on par with Thuan An nationwide. They offer early intervention and auditory verbal education for the younger kids and sign-based education for the older ones. The goal of the school is to integrate the younger hearing impaired children into regular schools, and the headmistress estimated about 80% have been, although many struggle in the hearing classrooms.

At any rate, I learned a great deal about the Vietnamese deaf education landscape between these two women. And, we certainly became friends by the end of the day, sharing stories in comfortable banter over lunch and many cups of tea. The headmistress is retiring in a few years and hopes to open an early intervention center in Hanoi at that time. When I said that was terrific, she responded, “Well, what would be REALLY terrific is if you would have a teacher training program at my new center when it opens!” The two women laughed - half-kidding and half not - as they waited for my reaction.... It was nice to have our program be so appreciated, that is for sure. It was a fun day. Part of what I am enjoying so much about this work is the opportunity it affords to transcend cultures and connect with bright, dedicated people – it is really wonderful.

Trading Starry Nights & Buffalo for Silk & Sidewalks

2009-10-05T23:04:00.006+07:00

I arrived in Hanoi a few hours ago, and what a change from the countryside! This clamoring city is bustling with contagious energy - its like hitting New York City after spending weeks in Fargo, ND. A much older metropolis than Ho Chi Minh (it turns 1000 in 2010), it offers more personality and flair - a sort of San Francisco to HCM's Phoenix.

My hotel is in the Old Quarter, a fun place to explore with shops of unique mercantile. silk vendors, and cafes at every turn. Around the corner is the outdoor market where you can pick up a mango or two. Down the street is the serene Hoan Kiem lake with its shady banyan trees, and a picturesque green pagoda standing sentry at its edge. At dawn, hundreds of locals face the rising sun and engage in silent tai chi exercises in tandem on the wide brick walkways that border the lake's circumference. I remember feeling a bit apologetic last year as I dodged in and out of the tai chi crowds on my morning runs like a slalom skier, hoping I wasn't too much of a distraction.

I am looking forward to a bevy of meetings here this week with representatives from universities, potential funders, and various NGOs. The name of my driver who transported me to the hotel from the Hanoi airport was Thang, which I learned means "winner' in Vietnamese. How about that? My own personal Rocky. I'm taking that as a good omen.....

Who Needs Disneyland?

2009-10-04T10:32:00.000+07:00

One has to appreciate a culture that finds so much to be thankful for and celebrates it all! When I came to Thuan An last year, we honored the teachers with wreaths, cards, and a big ceremony on Teacher Appreciation Day. This time, the focus has been on the kids during the annual Children’s Mid-Autumn Festival, or Tet Trung Thu, as its called in Vietnamese. This multi-day celebration leads up to the 15th day of the eighth lunar month, the day of the first full moon closest to the autumn equinox (yeah, I know…my brain stumbled over that complex calculation too)

This Mid-Autumn party takes place during the lunar cycle at the time of year when the moon appears largest in the sky. The moon, in its partial phases, represents the potential of life. Hence, the party follows the lunar cycle as it moves towards fullness, promoting the wish that children, who are in their development stages, will likewise achieve a full life of health, happiness, and prosperity.

In many ancient agricultural cultures, when the nights got longer and the light and heat from the sun decreased in the Fall, there were prayers and ceremonies urging the sun not to forget to rise again. The lanterns that Vietnamese children play with during this festival recall the wish for the return of the sun's warmth and light. There are several different shapes of lanterns including a five-star version that represents the sun, and a frog-shaped one that represents the moon. There are lanterns which spin around when a candle is placed inside, symbolizing the seasonal spinning of the earth around the sun.

Students from local universities and area schools have been visiting Thuan An all week to celebrate with the children here. Tonight was perhaps the best event yet with hours of carnival-like games, music, and food. When the sun dropped behind the horizon, lanterns were lit up and passed around to the kids who then went on a parade through the school grounds and surrounding streets. The night wrapped up with a large scaly Vietnamese dragon coursing through the crowd of children alongside a man dressed in white wearing a moon mask. They danced together to the heavy beats of the university student drums. Thuy was quick to explain this was no Chinese dragon, but rather a Vietnamese version that expresses the duality of their festivals. This dance between the man, or Lord Earth, and the dragon was a re-enactment of the earth and sky duality, the yin and yang of the world.

It was great to watch everyone running around, laughing, and having such a fun time with it all. They are truly a family of children here – a tight-knit group that eats, studies, plays, and lives together. So many of these kids have absent families – some by fate but others because their parents failed to see how they could ever amount to anything. Thuan An has stepped into a big void in these kids lives – providing a secure and happy place where they can belong and just be kids for awhile.

When the event ended, I walked back to the hotel in the warm, humid night. The university students who put on the show headed back to the city on their motorbikes, three to a seat, waving to me as they passed by. Suddenly one of the motorbikes pulled over and a student I befriended earlier, hopped off. She enthusiastically gestured for me to join the duo for a ride to the hotel. I jogged over with a smile to accept. The good will continues on.

Early Intervention Over a Cup of Tea

2009-10-03T19:25:00.000+07:00

As I took the first sip of yet another satisfying concoction of tea, I realized that I have yet to have a bad cup in Vietnam. There's just something about the way they prepare it here with a dash of sugar and some added spices that combine to make a perfect cup every time. I love the Vietnamese custom to share a steaming pot of fresh tea as part of any business meeting. A simple act of hospitality that has a magical effect of breaking the ice and helping strangers meeting for the first time edge a bit closer to becoming friends.

I was enjoying my latest cup in Ho Chi Minh City at the Early Intervention Center. Or, as the place is formally known - The Center for Supporting and Developing Inclusive Education for People with Disabilities in Sight, Hearing, and Mind Development - a mouthful of a name that demonstrates the comedy of vocabulary that can result when our languages are translated verbatim. It can take several words to say in English what the Vietnamese sum up in a single shot - and vice versa.

This Early Intervention Center is the only one of its kind in South Vietnam that is not part of a larger special education school. Established in 1989, it initially provided teacher training in early intervention, but then expanded in 1991 to include early intervention services of its own. The hearing impaired program helps infants and children up to age 6 in the Ho Chi Minh City area develop listening and speech skills with the goal that they will be able to join their hearing peers in mainstream schools by kindergarten or shortly thereafter. It is a clean, bright, and large state-run facility with a staff of three teachers who cater to about 23 families of children with hearing loss both at their homes and in therapy rooms at the Center. It continues to offer teacher training in early intervention for HCM City's special education schools, including occasional sessions taught by international experts.

After touring the facility and observing some therapy sessions, Thuy and I settled in to talk with the Center's Director, Ms. Ha, over a cup of tea in the conference room. We talked about early intervention in Vietnam, and she expressed that many children with hearing loss fail in regular schools simply because special education resources are not available and qualified teachers are in short supply.

We reviewed our teacher training program, and Ms. Ha was excited by the prospect of having this event at Thuan An next summer. She felt it would help teachers broaden their understanding of effective early intervention methods, particularly those in the 60+ schools in the provinces outside of HCM City where teacher training opportunities are few and far between. She offered perspective on the needs of EI teachers in general and some advice for the training based on her experiences conducting such events - and indicated that she would be interested in attending our workshop herself.

A Day in the Life

2009-10-02T22:16:00.000+07:00

School at Thuan An starts each week with a 7 am Monday morning flag ceremony. Students line up rank and file by age on the cement drive– bright-eyed and uniform in appearance with their pressed light blue and stark white-collared shirts and matching dark blue pants. The choice of footwear is by individual design and that is where true personalities leak out – there’s everything from pink florescent flip flops to Superman plastic sandals to staid black shoes. After the female teachers, dressed in pastel business suits, congregate alongside the children, they all join in to sing the national anthem and the flag is raised on the tall pole in front of the school. That is followed by a recitation of Ho Chi Minh’s creeds - five simple statements to live by – love your country, support your community, protect the environment, live with good intentions, and be courageous. The ceremony always starts with a lot of pomp and seriousness but that usually dissolves as classmates begin to poke and elbow each other in warm familiarity.

The 300 children, ranging from 4 to 20 years of age, then scatter with fluttering hands and excited voices to their classrooms housed in four large, airy buildings. The older children rely completely on sign language while the younger ones are getting their education through the spoken word. When these two groups converge in social settings, sign language is the communications mode of choice.

Vietnamese sign language, like the American edition (ASL), has its own syntax and sentence structure unique to the local spoken language. Its development was influenced by the French, which in turn, was derived from English sign language. Hence, many words and letters in Vietnamese sign are the same or similar to the American version. Since some of the older students understand basic English, I’ve been able to converse with them in a creative combination of rudimentary ASL, and picture drawings and written English on a pad and paper.

The older children sit on plastic stools behind wooden desks as they learn via sign language from the state-designed deaf education curriculum. Their studies end after the 5th grade – effectively eliminating any opportunity to get a high school degree or attend college. Thuy recognizes that these students are fully capable of acquiring more than just five levels of education, and for the past few years, she has arranged for mainstream teachers from secondary level and high schools to visit and teach.

I always try to sneak into the back of the younger children’s classrooms, but these 4 to 7 year olds have eagle eyes and jump at the chance to stand up, bow, and in exaggerated unison, greet me with a boisterous “Chao Co”. If the smiling faces, glowing eyes, and enthusiastic welcome from a group of 6-year-olds doesn’t put you into a good mood, well then, nothing will. Each of the three young teachers work with about 12 of these children at a time and its admirable to watch them captivate, entertain, and teach - all while managing the kinetic energy that these little guys have. Something unplanned happens every single day in these rooms as a result. Just yesterday, I joined a spontaneous train of kiddos as we hopped, shimmied, danced, sang, and laughed our way around the room and through the hallways in an effort to burn off some of their pent up liveliness on a rainy afternoon.

Across the way are small therapy rooms where 4, 5, and 6 year olds sit with Ms. Tam and practice speech and listening skills. They scrunch their faces in concentration as they listen to words and sentences said behind them and then attempt to repeat or answer questions. Ms. Tam is patient and kind, wrapping her arms gently around their shoulders as she encourages them to listen to her voice or say a word correctly. She celebrates each tiny success, and her young stewards respond with radiant smiles. They end the 15 minute sessions with a carefully chosen sticker, a hug, and a bow before the child rejoins his or her peers in class.

Upstairs, infants and toddlers engage in Early Intervention sessions. When you’re born without hearing sound and are amplified with hearing aids later, the brain has a lot of catching up to do in terms of auditory mapping and language acquisition. Ms Lan helps them do just that, coaching family members as they play, talk, and encourage speech from these youngest members of Thuan An.

At 4 pm, a cacophony of motorbikes converges on the school as parents pick up their children. Since 100 of the students are boarders, the day doesn’t end with the last class, but rather much later. After dinner, games, and homework, a staff of nuns leads them upstairs to bed. The boarding school environment and shared experience has created a strong bond among the children here. The older kids look out for the younger ones. It’s a real family environment.

Overseeing this complex operation are Ms Thuy, the Executive Director and Sister Dao, the Education Director. Sister Dao is a Catholic nun with a dry sense of humor and a comfortable-in-her-skin vibe. I can’t help but find myself waiting for her to break out into some Sound of Music song with the devoted and warm “Maria” way in which she interacts with the children.

There’s a lot to deal with but these women have multi-tasking down to a science. It’s a bit of a throwback in some ways. There is no inter-school conferencing system - teachers call each other on their cell phones. Faxes are popular. Email is not widely used. There are no credit cards. Food staples are purchased in bulk at the farmer’s market in the village and a large team of cooks prepares scores of meals fresh daily – no Lunchables here. Perhaps most striking is the fact that whenever Thuy makes a service telephone call, she gets a live person on the other end – no automated menus or voicemail.

Just like those weekly flag ceremonies, the school combines order and principled living with a whole lot of personality and charisma.

Changing Fate

2009-10-01T20:14:00.000+07:00

People are the same everywhere. Our cultures are different, our skin color, our clothes...but at the end of the day, everyone wants to feel secure, have a roof over their head, food on the table, an education for their children, connections with friends and family. What's great about travel is the opportunity it affords to observe how other people strive towards these same end results. The way they lead their lives, how they treat those around them, the importance (or not) of family and community. Travel provides a measuring stick against which you can assess your values and ideals.

You can become a different person in the context of a place. At the university and at Thuan An, the students bowed to me in customary respect as we passed in the halls, and I suddenly felt much older than my years. In the US, my 5'7" frame is ordinary, but here, I am a giant. I have to watch my head as I walk beneath market umbrellas and the canopies hanging over merchant stalls.

Travel leads you to think about what your life would be like if you lived in this place. Would I be unfazed by the relentless stream of motorbikes as I crossed the street? Would I be sitting on some tiny stool or plastic chair along with my family on the sidewalk during the daily lunch respite? It is interesting to think that the initial course of our lives is very much affected by things we don't control. Where we are born. Who our parents are. Our social economic status. Our talents. Our disabilities. All of these set your course.

In Asia, I am reminded again by the fact that so much of the world scraps by for a living. In the US, steady jobs and regular paychecks are relatively common. There are 401Ks and IRAs to safeguard your retirement. Here, things are different. You've got impromptu taxis in the way of motorbikers, kids who will shine your shoes, tiny old women wandering the streets selling food from bananas to waffles. People get creative to make a buck. I'm reminded of last year in Vietnam when I passed by a golf course that sat across the street from a very poor neighborhood. The local kids collected way-laid golf balls from the garbage dump and bushes that surrounded the high walls of the lush green course. They cleaned them up and sold the balls back to the golfers. A friend of mine told me about unofficial scrap peddlers in Shanghai who collect scrap for money, and in the process, keep the city clear of trash. It is amazing - the human fortitude to survive.

In this environment, communication is essential. There's no email or website to promote your product or service. If you want business, you have to market yourself. Kids with hearing loss in developing countries who don't have good language skills face some really tough odds for leading independent lives. What's frustrating is that this doesn't have to be the case. Hearing loss can be overcome and language can be acquired. What's needed is better technology, and more education and training to produce more and better teachers. That combination, in turn, will give more of these kids a chance at success.

Life. We can't change the hand we're dealt. What we can do though is help each other make the best of what we've got.

The Fun Intricacies of Language

2009-09-25T18:48:00.011+07:00

Today, Thuy and I spent about 3 hours with the Dean and Vice-dean of the Special Education Department at Ho Chi Minh City University. HCMC University has one of the largest education degree programs in the country and offers undergraduate diplomas in special education. Thuan An is affiliated with the university, providing courses and mentorships to aspiring teachers of the deaf and hard-of-hearing.

Our program was well-received by both heads. They see a real need for more of this advanced type of training to give teachers of the deaf and hard-of-hearing a deeper insight than any domestic university curriculum has been able to provide. Our meeting was a positive first step towards collaboration. They said they would love to see our program become a 3-year initiative that could serve as an extension of the university at Thuan An. I, of course, loved that idea as well, but we need the funding to make it happen.

There was a university student taking notes during our meeting. After we wrapped up, I asked her how classes were going and she said “they have us working as hard as a buffalo!” I soon learned that the water buffalo is the equivalent to our work horse. So, instead of saying they have us working "as hard as a horse", they say "as hard as a buffalo". How fun is that?!

I have been learning a lot about Vietnamese language development in children and how hearing-impaired children are taught to overcome the challenges that come along with the tonal aspects of their language. For instance, several Vietnamese words have multiple meanings depending on their intonation. The word comes off the lips in the same way each time, but with different tones. That poses difficulty for a hearing-impaired child who relies on lip-reading and can't hear the intonation. To remedy this, teachers help these children think about the larger context of the sentence and which of the word variations makes the most sense for that particular sentence. So, for example, the word "ma" can have six different meanings depending on the intonation. In the sentence “My horse is in the barn” the child is trained to recognize that horse is the best “ma” word that fits in the sentence, and hence is the word that has just been said. Of course, this teaching strategy isn't always foolproof, and teachers stress that more approaches to help with intonations in language is needed.

The Devil is in the Details

2009-09-22T18:29:00.005+07:00

It was comforting, in a strange way, to find that the Binh Duong province and Lai Thieu town where Thuan An Center is located hasn't changed one bit in the year I have been away. Lai Thieu would be better described as a country rest-stop for gas and a quick bite to eat than an actual town. Tired storefronts, identical in their offerings of Xtra gum, bottles of La Vie water, and assortment of Asian snacks, lean against dilapidated restaurants serving pho and coffee. Edgy dogs dart in and out of motorbike traffic on the busy national highway that slices through Lai Thieu's center. Sandal-clad women with black hair drawn back in long ponytails prepare vegetables as they fan away the humid heat. Barefoot boys sit transfixed on video games inside the Internet cafes, oblivious to the lizards that scurry around the walls and floors. Old men with bony knees gather on dirty stoops to share stories. The streets are gritty, the dust and noise constant, and yet, there is a strong sense of community here. You can't help but learn to love the place.

Head down a side road, pass the cemetery, then turn right into an alley and you'll discover a place that is safe, happy and filled with good will. I heard Thuan An before I saw it on Monday. The happy sounds of children rang out as I walked the distance from the hotel. The first person I recognized was Hahn, the audiologist, who did a double-take before rushing over to greet me. Then, Thuy came racing out of her office with a huge grin and just pure happiness before inviting me inside to get caught up. It was a very warm welcome. I later reunited with the students I worked with last year and it was fun to see that their English has improved.

The Global Foundation has a core team of experienced professionals who are structuring the workshop's four areas of focus - auditory verbal education, audiology, speech language,and early intervention. Thuy and I have spent the past two days reviewing the program recommendations for each area and working through the logistics of this one month event. It has been refreshing to have the face-to-face interaction after months of corresponding through the filter of email across different cultures and primary languages. We identified the 34 schools from throughout South Vietnam that will take part. It was a great feeling to review the list and see the impact we'll be making across such a large geographical area. I also spent time video-taping the classes and therapy sessions to give our experts some visual feedback on the methods currently used by the teachers at Thuan An.

Thuan An Revisited

2009-09-20T22:22:00.009+07:00

I'm looking forward to tomorrow when I'll be reuniting with the team at the Thuan An Center. The last time I saw Thuy, the executive director, she sent me off with a warm hug and urged me, in her sweet way, to stay in touch. There was never any doubt that I would. Our friendship grew over the course of this past year as we exchanged emails, first to share our lives, and then later, to brainstorm about how we might work together to remedy some of the needs of the deaf and hard of hearing children she serves.

Thuy has broad vision and a compassionate heart. She could have focused on Thuan An-specific projects to benefit the children there, but instead suggested we design a teacher training program that would have wide-reaching effect, and fill a great need for more expertise among teachers of the deaf and hard of hearing. Our proposal recommends that 80 teachers from throughout South Vietnam travel to Thuan An for a one-month intensive program to learn from US experts in various hearing-related fields. She pointed out that since 1 teacher works with 10 kids, this was an opportunity to directly impact the education of 800 children. That is 800 kids we can put on a path to a better life. Not only that, these teachers would share their learning with other teachers, making the benefits exponential. We hope to make this a three year initiative so that teachers can build on their knowledge over time.

Thuy's hard-working drive and selfless dedication to these children is shared by many of her peers in Vietnam. Last year, I met Vietnamese teachers, academics, and professionals who are all tirelessly working together to figure out ways to empower children with hearing loss. They were a real inspiration to me as I started this foundation - and they continue to be.

I serve on the board of a school in Seattle called Listen and Talk that is doing amazing things to help children with hearing loss, and I personally benefitted from early intervention and expert teachers early in my life. I know the challenges of hearing loss can be overcome. When I worked with those kids at Thuan An last year and saw the enthusiasm and energy they have for learning, I saw my opportunity to pay it forward. I started this foundation to help kids in developing countries have every chance at success in life by providing them with the resources and expert teachers they need.

I left Thuan An last year with hundreds of images that will remain burned on my mind's eye for a very long time. Perhaps one that is most compelling is the memory of passing by Thuy's office late at night and seeing her pouring over, for at umpteeth time, reams of material that Listen and Talk's Education Director had so generously taken the time to compile and pass along to share. That's what this program is all about - combining energy and passion with knowledge transfer and collaboration. With those ingredients, we will be successful in helping these young children. I can't wait.

Meeting of the Minds

2009-09-20T21:26:00.005+07:00

I met Ms Ngoc and her team at the Ky Uc cafe this afternoon. Ky Uc means "Memory" in Vietnamese, a fitting moniker given the reflective and relaxing ambiance they have created here. The place was dimly lit with small, dark wood tables, and plush couches. The menu offered everything from tea to exotic coffee drinks to enjoy while listening to the soothing background music that sounded through the place - a cozy escape from the rain and street clamor just outside.

I arrived early to wander this part of the city before the meeting and there was much to see. Every square inch of real estate was accounted for, and, like a child's set of balancing blocks, the neighborhood seemed to teeter precariously on top of itself. Markets of fresh fruit, rice, meat, and fish converged with living quarters stacked three stories high. Laundry strung from canopied balconies lined with plant boxes, and thick strands of cable wires linked the roof tops to each other. In the center of it all was a peaceful green pagoda with an inviting, manicured garden of bright flowers and plants. It was as if someone had studied the scene and determined that the people who live here just might need a place to escape the packed conditions for awhile.

Ms. Ngoc, the Vice-Dean of the HCM College of Special Education, arrived with two of her team lecturers from the college. This group hosted the UN People to People symposium earlier this week. I had sent them a copy of our teacher training concept proposal in advance in hopes to gather feedback and suggestions. They all were excited about our program design and the four tracks that we intend to offer- auditory verbal education, speech language pathology, audiology, and early intervention. There is a significant need for more understanding of these areas and also a need for language development research to better cultivate the acquisition of Vietnamese in children with hearing loss. We talked about the current deaf education landscape and what they see as pressing needs for teachers of the deaf and hard of hearing. We identified opportunities for collaboration in various areas pertaining to our program and I am looking forward to working with them as we continue this work.

Heaven, Earth, and the Rain In-Between

2009-09-19T18:13:00.020+07:00

"Be careful, your head", the guide called over his shoulder as he shined his flashlight on me. "It is tight here. Also, be careful your back." He nodded at my acknowledgement before turning forward to lead me hunched over through the narrow passageway. I was huddled in the infamous Cu Chi tunnels - a massive 75-mile underground maze of secret meeting rooms, sleeping areas, triages, kitchens, and wells where the Viet Cong lived and fought during the Vietnam War. These hand-carved tunnels are part of a larger network of passageways underlying much of Vietnam that has been used throughout history to conduct warfare against invading armies. People dropped into these tunnels through camoflaged entryways and would live down here for years, breathing the thin air and warding off poisonous snakes and scorpions. Guerillas protected the network above-ground with vicious booby traps and snares that showcased just how inhumane war can be. As I toured the compound, I was sobered by the thought that the Taliban's operation in Afghanistan is probably just as complex and mortifying.

After visiting Cu Chi, it was refreshing to take in the artistic beauty of the Cao-Dai Holy See Temple, the spiritual center of the Cao Dai faith. This broad religion includes elements of Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, and Islam, and its followers wear either white suits or colorful robes, each color denoting the root of Cao Daism they practice. I witnessed one of their meditation ceremonies and was left mesmerized by the singing chants, woodwind music, and drum gongs that reverberated throughout the beautiful temple.

Yesterday, an impressive tropical storm hit HCM City. I was huddled under a canopy, waiting for the Vietnam History Museum to open for the afternoon, when two men inside the art gallery next door urged me to join them. They offered me a cup of tea and we sat around a little table with me in the guest of honor seat - a green plastic lawn chair. Since we didn't speak each other's language very well, we used paper and a pen to draw pictures to ask questions of each other. I learned that one of the men created all of the art in this gallery. The impressive works looked like paintings, but were actually designs constructed of very tiny colored rocks. They tried to explain to me how it was all created, but I never quite got their gist.... Meanwhile, the rain was coming down in sheets and started to drip through the ceiling. One of the men got a bunch of sand buckets and we worked together, laughing as we jockeyed around the room to move the art, time the drips, and place the buckets to collect the rain. They seemed more concerned that their art was safe than the implications of a leaky roof.

When the museum finally opened, I said goodbye in Vietnamese and thanked them both for their hospitality. We had clearly become friends because they stopped me and took the time to correct my intonation - complete with an elaborate visual demonstration of how I should be positioning my tongue to say the words. I'm still working on it...

I'm looking forward to tomorrow's meeting with Ms. Ngoc and her team from the HCM City National College of Education. From there, I meet up with my interpreter and head to Binh Duong province and the Thuan An Center where I will be spending the next several weeks.

The World Felt a Bit Smaller Today

2009-09-18T17:43:00.030+07:00

I'm enjoying this boutique cafe with a ginger tea in hand and window view of the storm that's brewing outside. It is going to feel great when the rain really starts to fall and clears the air of the thick humidity. It's nice to sit here and reflect for a bit on last night's UN People to People event as well as the meeting I had this morning with the Director of Ho Chi Minh City's ENT hospital.

The United Nations People to People Citizen Ambassador program was started by President Eisenhower with the objective of building communication opportunities between American professionals in various fields with their counterparts in developing countries. The focus of these trips is on professional exchange and cultural engagement. The delegation that is currently in SE Asia is led by Dr. Alex Johnson, and features a stellar group of 35 speech language pathologists working in private practice, hospitals, schools, and universities throughout the US, Canada, and Australia.

Yesterday's symposium was held at HCM City College where students are learning how to educate children with special needs - specifically, hearing loss, blindness, and/or communication disorders. Established in 2003, the college is young but has already established itself as a leader in special education with a team of 12 lecturers. Speech language pathology is a new field in Vietnam and the team was looking for insight and counsel from the expert People to People delegation.

After everyone arrived, we were led into a conference room that demonstrated, yet again, the wonderful flair that the Vietnamese have for celebrating special events. The conference room table was beautifully decorated with delightful flowers, bright table coverings, and bowls of fresh fruit. All the female staff wore "ao dais" - long gowns of intricate patterns and colorful designs - that made us westerners look plain in comparison. Where was my fancy hat when I needed it?!

After a lot of formal ceremony and introductions, the Vietnamese team gave a short presentation about their college curriculum and current research work. They identified three key areas where they could use assistance in the field of speech language pathology: training in methodology, teaching materials for SLPs, and language development research/data. We spent the rest of the two hours talking about each of those three areas and how the delegates might collaborate with the Vietnamese team to help. It was a fascinating dialogue emblematic of the purpose of the People to People program. Dr Johnson was also kind to make the point that the Global Foundation's teacher training program could play a role in meeting some of their needs. I will be meeting with the college program's leaders this Sunday to review plans for the early intervention component of our training program and get their feedback and suggestions.

After the session, I joined the delegation for dinner at a wonderful Indochine restaurant. You enter the building after passing through a beautiful courtyard garden with lush greenery, a fish-bearing pond, and outdoor seating of teak wood - all softly lit with candles. Dr. Johnson gave me the opportunity to introduce our teacher training program to the 35 SLP delegates. He had sent the group a copy of the Global Foundation's concept proposal beforehand, which made my pitch a very easy one! Our project was well-received and I was warmed by the positive feedback and interest by several of the group's members to participate.

Dr. Johnson and his wife are engaging people, and I enjoyed talking with them over a fantastic dinner featuring plates upon plates of amazing food. It was a great night all around.

This morning, I met with the Director of the Ear Nose Throat hospital. The hospital provides its staff and doctors with training in early intervention and audiological support. Fifty children have received cochlear implants at this hospital, all of which were funded by their families - and about half now attend mainstream schools alongside their hearing peers. We had a good conversation about how these infants and families are served and make the transition to school. She was pleased to learn about our project and felt that it would serve a significant need for more teachers trained in audiology, early intervention, and the auditory-verbal approach.

Good morning Vietnam

2009-09-17T10:13:00.020+07:00

There's something about that moment when the customs official at a foreign airport takes his heavy duty stamp, and with an authoratative "thump- thump", makes the requisite imprints in the passport to permit entry into his country. I've traveled all my life, but that single instant gives me a surge of adrenaline every single time.

I arrived in Ho Chi Minh City at about 2 am this morning. After some sleep, I wandered the streets to explore and instantly felt right back at home. There's so much for the senses in this part of the world. Family and friends gather along the sidewalks in make-shift congregation areas of plastic chairs and tables to laugh and share tales; tantalizing scents waft from woks and stalls in the central market; honking horns compete with urgent shouts of vendors in silks and conical hats hoping to sell their wares; children dart in and out of the crowds while their mothers call after them. Its always a good test of one's acting abilities to step off the curb with nonchalance and watch as the seemingly impenetrable stream of motorbikes magically diverts around you. There's such a feeling of high energy and hard-working industry here that, paired with the thriving luxury hotels and shiny new office buildings that are everywhere, its easy to wonder if Ho Chi Minh City didn't somehow manage to sidestep the effects of the world's current economic downturn.

I stopped off at a cafe for a pair of bottled waters. Since they were out at the front counter, someone went upstairs for more. While I waited, an employee urged me to sit down, pulled out a chair, and joined me for some impromptu casual conversation. When the bottled waters arrived, they were individually wrapped in plastic to maintain their chill and provided to me in a durable bag with handles. The two cafe workers waved at my thanks and sent me off with genuine and warm smiles.

Yeah....its great to be back.

I'll be writing about my experiences here over the next several weeks as we continue to develop our program slated to launch in Vietnam next summer. I hope you will follow along. Thank you... I am grateful for your time and interest!

Welcome!

2009-09-16T03:25:00.002+07:00

Thank you for visiting the Global Foundation blog! I'm en route to Asia now...please check back after September 17 for news and updates. This is going to be a fantastic 6-week experience and I'm looking forward to sharing with you.