Volume 6, Issue 2
December 2012 www.discoveringdeafworlds.org
Building Capacity of Deaf Leaders in the Philippines:
DDW Receives U.S. Department of State Grant
DDW and PFD members celebrate the conclusion of a recent organizational development training. In a proclamation on Dec. 2, 2011, the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, U.S. President Barack Obama stated that the United States was placing “disability rights at the heart of our nation’s foreign policy.” To support this objective and raise public awareness regarding the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) launched a series of new grant programs under EMPOWER. These one-time grants support two-way professional exchanges designed to bolster disability rights in more than 20 countries. The four EMPOWER grants, awarded to Discovering Deaf Worlds (DDW), Global Deaf Connection (GDC), Mobility International USA (MIUSA), and American Councils (AC), will bring an estimated 75 foreign professionals to the United States for onemonth fellowships, and send approximately 57 American professionals abroad to participate in reciprocal programming. The design and implementation of the EMPOWER programs has been undertaken in cooperation with ECA’s Professional Fellows Division and the Office of the Secretary’s Special Advisor for International Disability Rights.
DDW will engage a diverse team of leaders from various sectors of the U.S. and Philippines’ signing Deaf communities to advance these communities’ self-determination through local capacity building. The exchange will bring 10 Filipinos to Rochester, N.Y., and Washington, D.C., for three weeks in May 2013, and will send 10 Americans to the Philippines for three weeks in November 2013. While in the United States, Filipino participants will meet a diverse pool of professionals from places like the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, Syracuse University College of Law, and Gallaudet University to explore disability issues from cultural, geographic, political and educational point of views. Participants will also have the opportunity to learn from experts in leadership, strategic planning, fund development, bookkeeping, disability law, and organizational development. Throughout the program, participants will engage in group work and discussion, applying their experience to developing a training manual on organizational sustainability. American participants will travel to the Philippines to collect data and gain a better understanding of disability rights issues there. They will visit institutions such as the Philippine Federation of the Deaf, De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde, and the Philippine Deaf Resource Center to meet with activists in the Filipino Deaf community. The knowledge they gain will be shared with their Filipino counterparts and the Department of State for assessment. DDW will then facilitate as American and Filipino participants develop an acDecember 2012 1