A US$280,000 educational project funded by Japan's Nippon Foundation

The Foundation has helped train teachers for the hearing-impaired in the southern province of Dong Nai.

Three elements of the project included teaching hearing-impaired high school students, teaching analytical skills using sign language, and selecting certain students to become teachers for other hearing-impaired students.

The project, to promote sign language teaching and interpretation, kicked off in May 2000 and will continue to 2012 at Dong Nam Teachers Training College.

According to the dean of the college, Nguyen Gia Bao, after six years in effect, the project has achieved promising results with 25 of 68 enrolled students earning their high school diplomas through exams alongside non-disabled students.

"The project has a positive social effect by providing a professionally-trained teaching staff for hearing-impaired children," Bao said. "We hope it will expand to universities across the country." There was a shift in the initial focus of the project, according to project director James Clyde Woodward, because few deaf children in Viet Nam had previously passed on to high school. Now, he said, "we must select high school students to participate in the project." The 68 hearing-impeared students in the project were drawn from around the country and became full-time students of the project following sign language interviews. Free of charge, they are given accommodation and taught the high school curriculum, while also receiving additional training in analytical expression and symbolic language using sign language. Among the students who have passed through the programme are Nguyen Tran Thuy Tien, now a freshman student at Lac Hong University, and Nguyen Hoang Lam, currently studying in the 11th grade with honours. This term, Woodward and his assistant, Tran Thi Hoa, have instructed certain excellent students to compile a Vietnamese-English-sign language dictionary and study guide.

Besides studying, students also have an opportunity to access educational, job orientation and recreational programmes to improve their ability to integrate into society while accumulating signing experience. The project has sought additional support, as well as employment opportunities for hearing-impaired graduates, from organistions and individuals. In the first term of the 2006-2007 school year, Lac Hong University and Dong Nai Province's Study Promotion Association presented 10 computers valued at VND80 million to the project. "I will make an effort to set up a fantastic project with the co-operation and assistance of enthusiatic international friends and teaching staff from local high schools participating in the project," Woodward said.