This week, Deaf Connect and Deaf Australia met with Emma Dawson, Executive Director and Michael D’Rosario, Research Economist from Per Capita

Per Capita have now commenced their research into the status and value of Auslan in Australia; this includes an extensive literature review, and economic and social policy analysis

The aim of the research is to provide an evidence base for our campaign to secure a Government Review into the status and value of Auslan in Australia, which we hope will prompt further action to address several key advocacy issues that were raised during our live stream event.

The first draft of the 10,000-15,000-word report will be received by mid to late March and will undergo a review process undertaken by both Deaf Australia and Deaf Connect. Ensuring we are satisfied with the content and direction of the report, in line with the community feedback collated from our consultation and our sector expertise

Deaf Connect, Deaf Australia and Per Capita will host a webinar for the community to present an overview of the research findings. Time: Sometime in April seems reasonable

Phase two of the campaign will include an advocacy and engagement strategy which will be developed and executed with support from Per Capita ahead of the 2022 federal election.When: April onwards

Further information about our advocacy and engagement strategy, including timelines, marketing collateral and ways to get involved, will soon follow over the coming weeks once Per Capita’s research report has been completed

Hello, my name is Debra Swann, I am the President of Deaf Australia.  We are extremely saddened to share the passing of one of our members, Barry Priori.

Barry was a member of Deaf Australia for numerous years and served on the Board around the year of 1995 when we were known as AAD prior to the change of our name to Deaf Australia.  He also served on the board of SAAD, the South Australian branch of Deaf Australia.

Barry was one of the founders of Sign Language Australia, a business providing support to the South Australian Deaf community through Auslan classes and interpreting booking services.

Barry had a strong belief that Auslan and Deaf culture belonged to the Deaf community and that the acknowledgement of this was very important in our work.  Through his work with Auslan and teaching the language, Barry touched the lives of so many people on the journey of learning Auslan.

Barry was involved in the production of a 30 minutes documentary film, “The Silent World of Barry Priori: Signing not waving”.  This film documents the important journey of his life in a Deaf world from the 1950’s to present day.

On behalf of the board, staff and members, we express our sincere condolences to Barry’s family, friends and colleagues.  Our thoughts are with you all.

Hello. I'm Breda Carty. I work on a special project with Deaf Connect.

Hello. I'm Darlene Thornton. I work with Deaf Australia.

We will have a webinar soon, about what we both are working on.

Webinar will be about Deaf Connect has set up Deaf History and Cultural Recognition Program.

Why we set up and what's involved in that program.

The special focus on plan to set up national repository or website for Australia Deaf history.

We are really excited to work on that new special project for all of us. We are keen to work with other organisations and the Deaf community all over Australia.

Please do join us for this webinar, and we will explain our vision.

Hello. My name is Jen Blyth, CE of Deaf Australia. I want to remind you all that we will have SGM tomorrow night. If you want to join, please do come, but you should join on zoom. It will also be livestreamed on Facebook. But if you want to be able to vote for important issues then you need to go on zoom, but only if you are a member. There will be a link under this video for zoom. If you are not a member then you are welcome to join up now. Thanks and hope to see you tomorrow night.

Hello. My name is Jen Blyth, CE of Deaf Australia. I’m currently here in Sydney. We have had staff meeting which most of us are here to discuss our roadmap and what we have been working on. It made me realise that we have done so much work relating to our roadmap. We had posters with lots of post-its covering the papers. I really have an amazing team. We will also have the board coming for the board meeting, training and SGM tomorrow night. I know it is raining in Sydney at the moment, I hope everyone in Queensland is alright. Its been a hard week this week. Also in this TTT we also have a video with an update about the election campaign. Lastly, a short update with some good news: the Greens Party in NSW has asked for an inquiry into Auslan interpreting in broadcasting. They submitted this to NSW Parliament – asking for this inquiry. This will soon be open for submissions, which means Deaf Australia and the community can make submission about this issue. We will also encourage other organisations to make submissions too to the Parliament of NSW to explain why it is important to have interpreters at all pressers and broadcasts. This is a fantastic opportunity and a great example of how building a relationship can make changes happen. That’s it from me, thanks for watching this update, have a great week, and I hope to see you all at tomorrow’s SGM!

Hello, Deaf Australia wants to let you all know that those who already have NDIS plans that there was a recent announcement that you can make a claim to cover the cost if you plan to buy a RAT – a home test to see if you have COVID19 or not. You can buy it, get the receipt to make the claim and get your money back, to cover the cost. Whether it’s through your plan management or self-managed plan to make a claim. Really, the NDIS wants those with disabilities and deaf people to still access support services and continue life as normal. Not as being stuck because they can’t afford to buy RATs, so they’ll cover the cost. If you want more information, you can have a look at the NDIS website. 

Hello, I’m Simon *gives name sign*, the Project Manager at Deaf Australia. I’m excited to tell you about two ILC funded projects we are doing at Deaf Australia The first one is to distribute Auslan based information resources to the Deaf community. The second one is to develop Auslan toolkits plus research the Deaf community. Really exciting projects, now over to Jen.   

 Hello, I’m Jen Blyth, CEO of Deaf Australia. I’m excited to tell you briefly about two projects we have at present. Why would I be excited about these projects? I feel they are really valuable and worthy projects for Deaf Australia. One project focuses on eLearning so people can develop knowledge about how to advocate for themselves and they can also access information that interests them. We provide webinars on topics of interest. Hearing people listen to podcasts on topics that interests them so Deaf people can watch topics that interest them too in their language (Auslan). The resources are also accessible with captions. I’m also really excited about the other project focusing on advocacy and information so you can use it for yourselves. Who are the people doing these projects? You shall see…  

 Hello, I’m Paula, I work as a resource officer developing the Deaf Ecosystem project. It has three strands: webinars presenting about specific topics; vodcasts where two people are invited to talk about chosen topics; and skill-share where Deaf people with short films of themselves showing a skill they have. If you want to be involved or you have an idea do let me know. I work closely with Shirley who I will now hand you over to… 

 Hello, I’m Shirley, I work in a community and development role. I’m focusing on the eLearning project, which is like an online course, over different topics. They’re designed to encourage you to develop knowledge such as making a stand and advocating for yourself thus making the decision-making processes easier. I am hoping to launch these courses very soon. If you are interested and keen to be involved do let me know. Now I’m going to hand you over to Darlene… 

 Hello, I’m Darlene and I work on the ILC 2 project, to develop toolkits to assist with governments and businesses over how to work with deaf people in Australia who use Auslan. I’m also developing toolkits for deaf people in Australia who use Auslan, to show the best way to advocate, the steps involved, to get what they need. It is an exciting project to focus on for the not-too-distant future. Pretty soon though we’ll need people to get involved in the project. Thank you!             

Hello, I’m Jen Blyth, CEO of Deaf Australia. I have a lot of information to provide to you all, squeezed into a brief update.  

 We have a SGM coming soon. The SGM will be held in March. What will we talk about? First, the road tour update, secondly, giving out the awards and thirdly give our members the opportunity to vote for one of two membership and fee structures that they prefer. We will provide more information soon to give you time to read it through and work out which option you want to choose.  

 We also have an update over our ILC project about which we will explain in a separate video.  

 We have the Auslan Day video competition coming up soon; we will celebrate our beautiful Auslan on 13th April.  

 Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been involved in meeting with all sorts of people for advocacy purposes and organisations as well to advocate to the government on different issues. One recent collaboration was with Deaf Connect last week, with Brent Phillips, (*missing name sign*) and myself, with Vanessa who MC’d the event. It focused on the election campaign with the Federal government and there was a lot of people involved with ideas, suggestions and comments. We also received emails with what people envision we should advocate over to the government for the election. I then had a meeting with Per Capita, a group tasked with the responsibility for researching the information we requested, so they can collate it all together to help us prepare for the campaign. I finished handed over what we had and they’ve not yet got back to us. We should receive it soon. Once we do, we’ll provide an update, the same as Deaf Connect will do with their *missed the sign*. We will provide more information as we go.  

 I think that’s it for now. As usual, if you have any questions, want advocacy support, or whatever else you need, do contact me. If you just want to know something, like what’s happening at present, that’s fine too.  

Don’t forget this Thursday we have a CEO Q & A with me, from 5 – 6 pm. That’s a good opportunity to ask me what’s on your mind or to clarify something. Thank you! Have a good week.   

Hello! I’m overseeing a project which focuses on developing eLearning modules which are online courses on different topics that you can access according to your interest/s. One topic we are developing is the Disaster & Risk Reduction (DRR) module. It’s a really interesting course where you learn about different emergency services, what they do, what specific services they provide and how they participate in community education to help defend against disaster. You’ll become knowledgeable after learning all about it.

We want to encourage people to put their hands up to get involved in two different groups; your experiences with one of the groups or both. The first group asks for anyone who has experience volunteering with emergency services such as the SES, fire services like the RFS or any other related services. If you have any experience with this please do come and get involved. We will ask you questions about your experiences to put into the module. It will encourage people to be more curious and learn.

That’s the first group. The second group asks for people who’ve experienced disaster/s such as house fires, bushfires, flooding, cyclones or any other natural disasters. We would like you to tell a short story about your experiences, to be filmed, as a Deaf person experiencing that along with things like communication breakdowns or lack of information available.

If you feel you have experience in one or the other or even both groups, please contact this person who is developing the DRR module named Leyla. Please email her ([email protected]), she will take your details, consult with you before arranging the filming of your story ranging from 1 to 3-4 minutes. The videos will be shown later along with the module at its launch. If you have any questions please contact us.

Deaf Australia recently received responses from a survey sent out regarding a few things; thank you for that. Part of the survey asked about the awards. There were a lot of comments suggesting that one of the awards be dropped and we all agreed that we will go from 4 awards to 3. The award to omit is the Fair Go award. We will provide more information at the SGM, a special meeting held on the 4th of March.

We are excited to open up nominations for the awards dating back from 2020 to 2021. It’s not for this year but for the past year. Have a look at the website which provides information for each different award. We have three awards: the Deaf Australian of the Year, Deaf Youth of the Year and Deaf Community Volunteer of the Year.

All the information is on the website, there is a nomination form you can fill in. There are guidelines to make sure that the person nominated fits the criteria. If there is anyone you know out there in the Deaf community who works hard, is a volunteer and supports the community and so should be recognised you can fill out details about them and why they should win. You can write or film yourself. You can upload the form and send it off, easily done. The nominations have a cut-off date which is the 25th of February at 5pm AEST. When we receive the nominations, we will have a team to assess them and make the announcements at the SGM in March.

So c’mon, get nominating!